A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 521 79176 6 hardback

For Becky and Tori

.

thought and politics Not poet but thinker Graecocentricism
69
72 73 76 78 80
Vii
.Contents
List of illustrations Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Introduction 1 The Origin of the Work of Art'
Hegel and the 'death of art' Heidegger's endorsement of Hegel 'Aesthetics' and the death of art 'Aesthetics' and 'enlightenment' Heidegger's rejection of Hegel The question: what is art? Expanding the concept of art Art as the 'opening up of world' What is a * world'? Ontology and ethics What is 'opening up'? What is 'earth'? 'Earth' in the artwork Difficulties in the account of 'earth' in the artwork Great art is communal The artwork creates a people The artwork preserves a people Clarity and the priority of poetry Heidegger's self-criticisms
page ix xi xii 1 5
6 7 8 12 14 15 16 19 21 25 29 38 41 46 50 52 57 60 61
2 Hölderlin: the early texts
'The Essence of Poetry' 'The absence and arrival of the gods' Poetry.

viii
Contents
Hölderlin: the later texts
The festival The modern poet's exclusion from 'the highest essence of art' What are poets for in 'needy times'? The modern paradigm The Apollonian and the Dionysian The epic and the lyric Is Hölderlin a poet for 'needy times'? Poetry and prose The Ereignis From the sublime to the holy From Nikeism to waiting Knowledge or faith?
84
84 89 94 96 100 101 102 105 108 111 115
Modern art
Anti-metaphysical art Another'turn' What is dwelling? Supernaturalism Naturalism Rilke .' 124^ 128 134 140 143 147 150 158 162 166 168 171
Index
175
. East Asian art Cezanne Klee Cubism Abstract art Music A philosophy of art?
120
123.

I should like to express my thanks to Friedrich Voit, Thomas Rohkrämer, Jeff Malpas, Christoph Jamme, Günter Seubold, Herman van Erp, Charles Guignon, Armin von Ungern-Sternberg and Rebecca Young (the elder) who in various ways have made this a better book than it would otherwise have been. Also to my Auckland students, in particular, Hannah Slade, Sean Sturm, Karl Stevens and Jonathan Oosterman, for the sympathetic yet searching examination to which, on a weekly basis, they subjected both Heidegger's and my own ideas. My greatest debt is to Hubert Dreyfus, who twice went through versions of the manuscript with a fine scalpel. (Notwithstanding, there remains a great deal with which he would certainly disagree.)

Discussions of Heidegger's philosophy of art usually begin and end with his celebrated (or infamous) 1935-6 essay. I shall argue. The subsequent shape of that path. since Greece or. for at least two reasons. art. therefore. 'Great'. le Corbusier. 2. the essay is no more than the beginning of Heidegger's 'path of thinking (Denkweg)' about art. unlike Hegel. highly unfortunate.but that they end at the same point is. it is also.Introduction
1. original and seminal though the work is. The Origin of the Work of Art'. The first is that. Klee and Cezanne. Rilke. The second is that though indeed the beginning. Heidegger's thinking in the mid-1930s is overshadowed by Hegel's celebrated thesis of the 'death of art'. 'art-less'. a path which had. he agrees with Hegel. in fact. Heidegger agrees with Hegel that the present age is. is largely determined by his dawning awareness of the inadequacy of its beginning. non-trivial. Stefan George. That they begin here is appropriate . Evidently. at best. and holding that such a return (as constituting nothing less than the 'salvation' of the West) is devoutly to be desired. a thing of the past.which leads to this conclusion. profound. has been. a considerable number of modern artists: inter alios. as later on Heidegger clearly recognized. the end of the Middle Ages. In chapter 11 outline the conception of art . in essence.1 call it 'the Greek paradigm' .1935 indeed marks the beginning of Heidegger's serious philosophical engagement with art . return. In the final decades of his life Heidegger came to have a great love for. one day. in important respects seriously inadequate. Though. Stravinsky. Georges Braque. another forty years to run. holding that great art could. And he developed a considerable personal involvement in the art world. in order to bring his theorizing about art into line 1
. in fact.

Cezanne and Klee. a great deal of modern art. a paradigm I refer to as 'the modern paradigm'. the 'early' Hölderlin discussions of 1935-6. It grounds. Heidegger possessed an abiding and thoughtful love for the work of the early Romantic poet. of how a great thinker. a history of intellectual development and personal integration. 'pregnant with future' to suffer such a fate . as a passionate lover of. I argue. too.through. whose thoughts look suspiciously similar to Heidegger's own. the art of Zen Buddhism. In chapter 3 I show how.in art. important. in particular. Friedrich Hölderlin. This new pluralism in his thinking. to a stance of complete alienation from the art of his own times. I suggest. finally. and knowledge of.2
Introduction
with his love for.or at least 'validity' (PLTp. modern art. then. an undistorted understanding of Hölderlin's poetry. I try to fehow how. his rapprochement with the East. Rilke. not a poet. and. Yet even in 1935 theory and knowledge were already in tension. From Hölderlin's metapoetical account of his own work. but rather a philosophical thinker . as I put it. and conscious of the impossibility of representing Hölderlin as a poet of the same type as Homer or Sophocles.the 'later' Hölderlin texts (1939-46) finally abandon. In chapter 41 show how it was the acknowledgment of the modern paradigm that enables Heidegger to overcome his blanket alienation from the art of his own age. his account of 'what poets are for' in the 'needy times' of modernity (as opposed to the thriving times of Greece) Heidegger takes over a second paradigm of greatness . thought his way out of a position which. and as
. something had to be done about the Greek paradigm. through a deeper and more open understanding of Hölderlin . unable to see beyond the Greek paradigm. In chapter 21 examine Heidegger's attempt to reconcile this tension in. I show how his Hölderlin-induced conviction that the essential task of art in the 'dis-enchanted' age of modernity is to 'found the holy' grounds his interest in. not the Greek paradigm as such . in particular. and shapes his reading of. as Nietzsche would say.a thinker. in the event. For already. at the time of writing 'The Origin of the Work of Art'.which is far too interesting. starting out from an account of art that condemned him. moreover. qua philosopher. as I call them. allows him. 96) . with.but rather its tyrannous role in his thought. Heidegger is driven to distort his importance into that of. My story is. Heidegger's allowing himself to be 'educated' by the poet .

In at least one place. and indeed unintelligible. he clearly distinguishes these senses. there is 'Being' in the sense of 'beings in the . and a late Heidegger (post-1938).no mean ability. In chapter 4 (section 3). a 'post-war' Heidegger. he also says. 76. ed. Let me say. P 309-10. in 'What are Poets for?'. however. however. 366). So in addition to Heidegger's three. R. as I chart the development of Heidegger's 'path of thinking' about art. . 1970). 4. 344 and p. that which allows the beings of our world to be intelligible as the beings they are.is Hölderlin. p. he says. therefore. The hero of my story . I shall. usually without being very explicit or helpful about it. a middle or transitional thinker (1930-8). I shall argue. with respect to politics. he himself invites us to contemplate three (of course related) thinkers: an early (pre-1930) Heidegger.or rather the other hero . S. Murthy (New Delhi: Heinemann. tr. that it was not completed until the transition to 'Ereignis-thmking' in 1936-8 (see GA 15. I shall identify a fourth. . pp. but quite different. in the poet's own language. introduce a potentially bewildering number of different Heideggers.Introduction
3
himself a poet of. One further preliminary matter (for scholars: this section should be skipped by those with no previous acquaintance with Heidegger). not only with respect to art but also. Wisser. there is 'being in the sense of lightening-unifying presence'. as I shall sometimes say. plenitude {Vollzähligkeit) of all their facets (Seiten)' (PLTp. 3. On the other hand. Heidegger himself identifies a 'turn' in his philosophy as having begun in 1930. as we will see. A great deal of trouble in trying to understand the 'Sein' in Heidegger's 'Seinsphilosophie' (the 'Being' in his 'philosophy of Being') is caused by the fact that. This is what he elsewhere calls 'the clearing'. and in Martin Heidegger in Conversation. he had always really known to be an error. the 'saving power'. it was Hölderlin who was. to us.1 On the one hand. something about how they are related. he in fact uses 'Seirf in two central. he says. including those that are unknown. For Heidegger. Since. 'views of the appearances of what are to our representing
1
Also at DTip. 44-5. I shall argue for the recognition of yet another 'turn' as occurring in about 1946. however.
. senses. 124).

Mimicking this practice. 'intelligibility' (BT 152). unintelligibility.
. The essence of 'Sein' in the first sense is. But in the second it is precisely the opposite. as Heidegger puts it in Being and Time.). Sometimes. 136). 'the ungraspable' (Ister p.4
Introduction
objects' which belong on the other 'side' of our 'horizon' of intelligibility (DTpp. (The practice is more pronounced in earlier Heidegger but persists later on as well. see. 'the mystery' (P pp. footnote a). 136ff. and the lower case 'being' to mark the first. I will. P p. throughout this study. 64-5). I shall retreat to the German 'Sein9. 144. Heidegger marks this second sense by writing 'Sein' with the 'i' replaced by the antique 'y'. for example. Where I wish to remain neutral between the senses. use the capitalized 'Being' to mark the second sense. but by no means consistently.

Heidegger first turned to extended thinking about art in the mid-1930s. 392-404. in which art receives considerable attention. pp. First. the Introduction to Metaphysics (IM) of 1935. Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge in the 1927 The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (BP pp. the final (of three2) versions of The Origin of the Work of Art' (PLTpp. an attention which can only be described as obsessive. because the only hope of producing an intelligible reading of this tortuously enigmatic work lies in integrating it into the surrounding texts of the same period of thinking. And third.) Discussions of Heidegger's philosophy of art usually confine themselves to this work. as already intimated. it is only the beginning of Heidegger's 'path of thinking' about art. This. 2 See Jacques Taminiaux's The Origin of "The Origin of the Work of Art"' in Reading Heidegger. inconsistent with.has given rise to a baroque foliage of secondary literature that has had progressively less and less to do with Heidegger. Of all these works. because.
1
. 171-2). indeed. 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry' (HE) of early 1936.1 In close proximity to each other he produced the lectures on Hölderlin's 'Germania' and The Rhine' (GA 39) of 1934-5. because it contains fundamental
A significant exception to this is the substantial discussion of a passage from. Second. as mentioned. as we shall see. taking it to be the full and final statement of that philosophy. the real thrust of the essay . As mentioned in the introduction. is for several reasons a highly unfortunate assumption.1
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
1. (Its reverie on Van Gogh's painting of shoes .a testament to Heidegger's early love of Van Gogh but almost completely irrelevant to. 17-87) of late 1936. The Origin of the Work of Art' (hereafter The Origin') has received by far the greatest amount of attention. and The Will to Power as Art (NT) (the first volume of the four-volume Nietzsche study) of 1936-7. J. ed. 1993). Sallis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

1-74) make clear. p. largely determined by his awareness of the difficulty raised by the criticism and the attempt to rectify it. the absolute. Gesamtausgabe edition of the work (GA 5. 40)4 . the much better reception of early Heidegger has. 79-81) (completed at an unknown time between 1936 and the 1956 'Addendum' (PLT pp. (2) Great art (but not of course all art. pp. 'artwork'. blunders of translation. opens itself up' to 'man's historical existence' (N I. or even all art of 'quality') is. meaning that he uses 'art'. 82-7)). in the anglophone world. (Conversely. Heidegger indicates the fundamental concerns of the essay by positioning it in relation to Hegel's celebrated thesis of the 'death of art'. as well as in chapter 13 of The Will to Power as Art. In this chapter I shall often follow him in this practice. 379) on including in the final. later Heidegger was well aware of these deficiencies. lies in the unreliable quality of the sole English translation . 40). to. and so on as abbreviations of fgreat art' and 'great artwork'. the forty-two mostly sharply self-critical footnotes Heidegger insisted (GA 5. the unconditioned.'great' art. I suspect.
. a thing of the past and has been since the time of Plato or.is art in which 'the truth of beings as a whole i. historically located. Hegel's thesis can be represented in terms of the following four propositions. unfortunate. I shall suggest. 133 ' Predikatiorf as 'prediction' instead of 'predication'. I suspect. (It also contains many carelessnesses that have been allowed to stand for thirty years. 84). As. In this chapter I shall be concerned to understand first the work itself. and then the^most important of Heidegger's own criticisms of it. culture.by Albert Hofstadter in Poetry. (1) Art in its 'highest vocation' . Heidegger calls it {PUT p.e.) Heidegger says that 'great' art is the only kind of art 'under consideration' in the essay (PLT p. for us.) The widespread anglophone belief that later Heidegger lapses into unintelligible quasi-mysticism has. omissions. Hegel and the 'death of art' 2.3 One of these is of particular significance since the subsequent development of his 'path' is. inter alia. a given. infelicities. for example. on p. and moments of unintended humour arising from the translator's being a non-native speaker of English. which I shall mention as and when the need arises. Thought (PLT). 44. As Heidegger presents it. Language. p. On p. The work contains many interpolations that correspond to nothing in the German. In the 'Epilogue' to 'The Origin' (PLT pp. at the very
3
4
A further reason the obsessive attention paid to 'The Origin' has proved. been significantly aided by the superb quality of Macquarrie and Robinson's translation of Being and Time. that is. ' Welf appears as 'word' rather than 'world'. received not a little help from the failings of the Hofstadter translation.6
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
deficiencies.

Heidegger's stance towards the Hegelian position is as follows. the West) is not only dead but must remain so. he again agrees with Hegel. It is clear. In the Nietzsche volume he says.e.': it is used to equate Hegel's characteristic term 'the absolute' with his own 'truth of beings'. dialectical laws of history that led to the supersession of its 'truth'-disclosing function by religion. 77). perhaps. Given. What is important here. as an educated guess would suggest. History never repeats a more primitive stage of itself but is. is no cause for serious regret. 'truth of beings' (PLTp. In 'The Origin' itself. at least. while an occasion. on the side of the content of the artwork. therefore. on the side of the receivers of the artwork. that 'great art' is great insofar as it 'makes manifest' the 'truth of beings as a whole i. p. 39). what Heidegger is doing here is agreeing with Hegel that nothing less than the reception of the artwork by a culture ('people') as a whole is sufficient to establish its 'greatness'. 84).Heidegger's endorsement of Hegel
7
latest. to repeat. the death of art. that. is the 'i. which was in turn superseded by science. as we will see. the end of the Middle Ages. With regard to the first proposition . 84). i. Where Hegel holds that great art manifests 'truth' to (in Heidegger's precis) 'man's historical existence' (N I. what it is that it 'makes manifest'. Heidegger himself says that great art is the 'transporting of a people into its endowment {Mitgegebene)' (PLT p. Heidegger's endorsement of Hegel 3. those to whom the manifestation is made.the Hegelian definition of (great) art . that 'endowment' is another word for 'truth'. the unconditioned. Heidegger's leading idea is that the great artwork is 'the happening of truth'. Moreover. (4) Since this is so. Art is only great if. for nostalgia and expressions of gratitude. of the ever-increasing perfection of the world.e. In the Lecture on Aesthetics of 1828—9 Hegel says (and Heidegger quotes) that
.he is in full agreement. the absolute' (JVI. Heidegger takes himself to be repeating (or maybe interpreting) Hegel. The inexorable. rather. (3) Great art (in. p.e. Heidegger also agrees with Hegel's second proposition. like the passing of childhood. it possesses world-historical significance. are inexorable. like the Greek temple or medieval cathedral. a record of uninterrupted progress.

the virtual replacement of 'philosophy of art' by 'aesthetics') is no mere matter of terminology but represents. p. Yet perhaps experience is the element in which art dies. Heidegger observes in the Nietzsche volume. as one might call it. and remains for us. the triumph. of judgment and thought. to disclose to its
Specifically by Alexander Baumgarten in his Reflections of Poetry of 1735. 79)
As a synonym for 'philosophy of art'. the object of aisthesis. for us. (N I. rather. in both theory and practice. of a particular conception of art over an older. something less (actually a lot less) than great. so 'aesthetics' was knowledge of aisthetike. but its form has ceased to be the highest need of the spirit. world is. that is. 80). 'ethics' of character and behaviour. The point Heidegger seeks to emphasize is that the introduction of this synonymy (indeed. 'aesthetics' came into being as the result of a division of labour first explicitly carried out in the eighteenth century. 77-8). are gone. the totality of the art of the post-medieval. modern. of 'sensations and feelings and how these are determined' (N I. like the golden era of the later Middle Ages. 'Aesthetics' and the death of art 4. 84)
Heidegger says that. Experience is the source that is the standard not only for art appreciation and enjoyment but also for artistic creation. 'aesthetics':
Aesthetics takes the work of art as an object. as for Hegel. Today we call this apprehension experience. even at its best.5 As 'logic' was understood as the establishment of systematic knowledge of logos. The dying occurs so slowly that it takes a few centuries. 'ethical' conception which took for granted that the point of art was to be 'truth'-disclosing. (PLT p. on the side of its highest vocation.8
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
Art no longer counts for us as the highest manner in which truth obtains existence for itself One may well hope that art will continue to advance and perfect itself. pp. The way in which man experiences art is taken to provide information as to its essence. of sensuous apprehension in the wide sense. this judgment is 'in force' (PLT p. In all these relationships art is. 80). The magnificent days of Greek art. Why should this be the case? Why does none of the art of modernity qualify as 'great'? Heidegger's answer is contained in one word. surveying the contemporary scene.
. For him. something past (PLT p.

as opposed to 'craft'. A successful artwork is one which is beautiful. possesses. nor is expected to provide. 11. 'disinterestedness'. We do this when we just look at it (or listen to it) without relating it. it is designed to provide 'aesthetic experiences'. p. Erwin Panofsky: It is possible to experience every object. pp. is 'die schönen Künste'. specifically with Plato ( M . p. and when he looks at it from the point of view of an ornithologist. he will associate it with the birds that might nest in it. NY: Doubleday. Only he who simply abandons himself to the object of his perception will experience it aesthetically. Heidegger says. the shape of the proper way to live. literally.
. For Heidegger. the history of Western art. however. no longer provides. aesthetically. Art is expected to produce 'aesthetic experiences'. 'the beautiful arts'. on this approach. which he outlines in chapter 13 of the Nietzsche volume. is that it is beautiful. When a man looks at a tree from the point of view of a carpenter. for example. the 'few centuries' in which great art died.Aesthetics' and the death of art
9
audience. and nature too. did the practice of art become aesthetic.6 On an aesthetic approach such as this. is the history of the slow overtaking of practice by (Platonic) theory. WTiat is the 'aesthetic' conception of art? The essential thing about art. therefore. Rather. at least the outline. 90). to anything outside itself. that is. As theory. the aesthetic conception of art began in antiquity (PLTp. That 'aesthetics' has displaced 'philosophy of art' reveals. Art. 80-3). which is to say that it. What is the 'aesthetic state'? According to the tradition Heidegger holds to be dominant in the modern age. We attend to the object of perception
6
Meaning in the Visual Arts (Garden City. 79). Heidegger believes. the essential thing about aesthetic experience is decontextualization. that we have abandoned the ethical conception of art. in Kant's word. 1955). is 'examined and evaluated on the basis of its capacity to produce the aesthetic state' (iVT. Here. intellectually or emotionally. guidance as to how to live. When a man at a horse race watches the animal on which he has put his money. 'aesthetic appeal'. 5. is the famous art historian. he will associate it with various uses to which he might put the wood. Post-eighteenth-century German even builds this into the definition of art: 'fine art'. Only with the advent of modernity. he holds. natural or man-made. the hallmark of the proper reception of art is. he will associate its performance with his desire that it may win.

When we achieve such a state we enter
the painless state prized by Epicurus as the highest good and as the state of the gods.. according to the theory Heidegger has in mind. 68). to fear and hope. completeness. one might ask. 1987)). balance. exist in the eighteenth century. in ordinary life. Nonetheless. 'disinterested'. from every relation it may have to our intellectual and practical interests. abstract qualities. they are removed. 195-6. from all relation to care. When the mind is wholly absorbed in aesthetic experience we become free of pain. Schopenhauer actually believes that in the aesthetic state one achieves not only peace but also a kind of insight into the 'essences' of things (see chapter 7 of my Willing and Unwilling: A Study in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (Dordrecht: Nijhoff. the wheel of Ixion stands still. too. ed. its formal. as Heidegger understands it. Its point.harmony. in such experience. is left when we 'bracket' out all the connections which. This. simplicity in perfect combination with complexity. We celebrate the Sabbath of the penal servitude of willing. one might suggest. As art.
. F. was to represent in a way that highlighted the formal qualities constitutive of beauty . 2 vols. is what we are taken to respond to by the 'aesthetic state' theory: 'aestheticizing connoisseurship' of art. representation was the occasion rather than the point of the work. What. abstract. lack of superfluity.10
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
in and for itself. no longer the 'subject of willing' but rather the 'pure will-less subject of knowledge'. and so on . character of aesthetic experience pleasurable? Since objects. This shows that the formalist conception of the aesthetic state is not the only possible conception. its qualities and charms' (PLTp. anxiety and stress. Payne.7
7
The World as Will and Representation. Art was always 'representational'. E. are removed from all relation to our practical interests. is a matter of taking delight in 'the work's formal aspects. an object has? Only. 1996). J. of course. for that moment we are delivered from the miserable pressure of the will. however. Heidegger's assumption that the latter was the dominant conception throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries strikes me as true. 'Abstract' visual art did not. We become.to represent so as to facilitate entry into the 'aesthetic state'. that is. as Schopenhauer puts it. he says. (New York: Dover. Why is it that wefindthe decontextualized. I. (That the roots of twentieth-century abstractionism may well be seen as lying in aesthetic state theory is an important clue to understanding later Heidegger's antipathy to abstract art (see chapter 4 section 25 below). pp.

If. an understanding of how to live is something we all need. for life. while pleasant. fears and anxieties. And even if that is not our choice. it is still not the case that we stand in need of art as such. of peripheral importance. is no absolute necessity. however. art has 'nothing about it of action'. 6. analytic philosophy.represents. a unique kind of peace. Rather. sport. the place of art in modernity . art takes its place as simply one option on a smorgasbord of offerings no one of which is any more or less valuable than any other. an industry aimed at providing pleasurable experiences for 'connoisseurs' (ibid). 40). We may choose to live without it. if it is 'harmless and ineffectual'. as aesthetic. We enjoy the aesthetic state because it is a form of stress relief. to be workaholics. the triumph of the aesthetic conception of art. (JVI. As stress relief. travel. art becomes merely a 'sector of cultural activity' (QCTp. 294-6). wine and food and so on. recreational sex. then it fails to be something we need to take 'seriously' (HE pp. we achieve a moment of stillness. Schopenhauer's answer. according to Heidegger. p. self-evidently. We value it because it 'reposes and relaxes' (IM p. 131).more precisely. 34): merely one 'sector' of that which puts a little icing on the cake of life given that many other sectors are equally available. But if that is all that is valuable about art then it becomes. however. art becomes the province of 'the art industry' (PIT p. As such. Heidegger says in 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry'. a moment of lyric stasis in the midst of busyness. But stress relief. a holiday from the anxious world of willing and working. In the Nietzsche volume he says that
What makes art great is not only and not in thefirstplace the high quality of what is created. art is great because it is [answers to] an absolute need. essentially. albeit in somewhat less elevated language. gossip. 84)
Greek art answered such a need because. then . Modern art. is aesthetic experience the 'element' in which great art 'dies'? Heidegger asks why it is that we value aesthetic experience. As the fashion industry provides pleasurable objects to the consumers of fashion. Heidegger says that. Why.'Aesthetics' and the death of art
11
Instead of being harried here and there by our hopes. and gives. so the 'art industry' provides pleasurable objects to the 'consumers' of art. When
.

it exists only for those few 'sectors' of the population who choose to go in for that particular form of rest and recreation. But Heidegger actually provides a deeper analysis of the death of art by
8
This. aesthetics is the element in which great art 'dies'. but no less trivial. In two ways.
. Since the enjoyment of (at least fine) art requires leisure and education . a triviality . an option rather than a 'need'. the former involves an element of judgment. for both Hegel and Heidegger. dies.8 (One is reminded here of Berlioz' remark that the Italians take their opera as they take their food. 'exists only for the enjoyment of a few sectors of the population' (N I. great art must have.) One reason. that 'aesthetic' art fails to be great art . Aesthetics is the element in which art. Heidegger's implied comment is: different. 'a matter for pastry cooks' (IM p. 85). 131). concerns precisely the idea of 'taking up' art. then. in modernity. descends from greatness into triviality It becomes marginal within the lives of those who choose to take it up. And it becomes marginal to the life of the culture as a whole. reason. of course. gastronomic experience on the grounds that while the latter is a matter of pure sensation. however. evidently. art. says Heidegger. Heidegger complains that whereas the art of Homer and Sophocles gathered together and united an entire culture. in a double way. meaning that the provision of pleasant experiences to 'connoisseurs' of art is neither more nor less important than the provision of pleasant experiences to connoisseurs of food. This follows from what has been said already. We do not have an 'absolute' need for stress relief of any sort. Another. If art exists only as a 'sector' on the smorgasbord of 'cultural activity' then.aesthetic art becomes the province of a subcultural social elite. specifically.becomes. devoid of that world-historical significance which. then. p. in fact. as a non-trivial enterprise.12
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
art becomes aesthetics it becomes. maybe. is a deliberate insult to eighteenth-century thinkers like Kant who sought to elevate aesthetic over. and even if we did we do not need art in order to satisfy it.the masses prefer real to metaphorical pastries .is that even in the lives of those who 'take it up' it represents. 'Aesthetics' and 'enlightenment' 7. related.

metaphysics5 {Ister p. however.'Aesthetics' and 'enlightenment'
13
providing an account of why. the Enlightenment began with the Sophists. They 'aestheticized' ethics. 'scientism' or 'positivism'. evidently. ethical utterances play an important role in human life. so some account is required of what that is. I take Heidegger to say. a susceptibility which is the sine qua non of a statement's being accorded the title 'scientific'. that positivism aestheticizes art. The aesthetic view of art. .
. Socrates and Plato. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did it achieve world-historical dominance. in Plato's view. . as the label of an historical epoch. like cries and groans. Only. in action. at the beginning of the modern age. since. Having expelled it from the domain of truth (it was the poets'. however. he understands 'enlightenment'.9 As an intellectual movement. unmerited reputation as truth-disclosers that led to his expelling them from the ideal state) there remains no alternative but
9
It is important to notice that this is a highly atypical use of 'metaphysics'. feelings. in other words. as we might put it. is 'metaphysics' applied to art. as we will see. the aesthetic approach came to be the dominant climate within which art was created. The answer the positivists produced was a more or less sophisticated version of 'emotivism': ethical utterances rather than reporting truths evince. claims Heidegger. it names that period {ibid). assigned it to the domain of feeling. By 'metaphysics' Heidegger here explains. Heidegger uses the term in such a way that 'the truth about reality is fully expressible on the "rigid grid" of "reason's concepts'" {Ister pp. 'Enlightenment' is. he claims. Convinced that only science could possibly provide access to truth it followed that ethical utterances could not be truthbearing. 88). 'metaphysics5. In the Ister lectures he says that 'aesthetics is the way in which the essence of the beautiful and of art is delimited in terms of . in more current language. Having expelled ethics from the domain of truth the positivists. 'killing is wrong' is not susceptible to empirical testing. which is why. 111-12). Generally. the view that knowledge of the truth about the world is the exclusive province of 'reason' {Ister pp. Evidently. Why does this lead to the aestheticization of art? In the 1920s the so-called 'logical positivists' confronted ethics as a theoretical problem. It is in a way similar to this. 111-12) counts as merely one species of metaphysics.

or anyone's . German sense). History is.laws. 48). Great art died because for better or worse (better in Hegel's view. the ultimate ground of the triumph of the aesthetic view of art is the imperialism of reason. for its original receivers. one cancels its truth-bearing function. it disclosed the 'truth' of the Christian cosmos but. There is no discoverable law to history. If. The character and timing of world-historical change is therefore something
no one knows. we have seen. illusion (gCTp. For Heidegger. 42)
Heidegger also rejects Hegel's fourth proposition. A knowledge of this kind would even be most ruinous for man. Hegel's third proposition. all one is left with is its 'aesthetic' role. That art might one day become. Notice that. Though currently 'in force'. and science alone. in second place.14
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
to assign it to the realm of feeling. the judgment that great art is dead and gone for ever 'has not yet been decided' {PLT p. has access to truth. it did so in a formally beautiful way. 34-5) with the 'desti-
. it is only if great art returns that there can occur a 'decisive confrontation' {QCTpp. once more. predict. 80). however. Nor is it necessary that we know. 'sent' to us by a 'Being' we can neither comprehend. because his essence is to be the one who waits. in the end. nor control. {QCTp. thinking about art in a climate of positivism. Far from being something we can happily do without. who attends upon the coming to presence of Being. every attempt to 'calculate' it being an. 'an essential and necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our historical existence' {ibid. Heidegger's rejection of Hegel 8. control-oriented. he rejects. The reason Heidegger disagrees with Hegel here is that he rejects the idea that history happens according to Hegel's . this more or less repeats Hegel's analysis of the death of art. rather. the triumph of the view that science (in the broad. then. A great medieval altarpiece possessed. technological. at least two aspects: most importantly. then. worse in Heidegger's) science took over the role that had made it great. at bottom. With respect to Hegel's first two propositions.) is a possibility that nothing precludes. Heidegger is in complete agreement.

The University of Freiburg library has.))
. but rather in the margins of one or the other of those books. Reflection on art only began. In an. Modern art. is something we need more than anything else. but rather 'art' (PLTp. Unlike Arthur Danto. to '1957' or 'I960' marginalia I do not mean they were written in one or the other of those years.). I am told. answered in the first paragraph. 91) of the age. Only such reflection prepares a 'space' for art (PLTp. as the greatest age of art came to an end (N I. The return of great art. not the artist. 80).bad theory.the theory. the Pre-Socratics would have given had they been disposed to theorize about art. 17). 1). 78). with Plato. When I refer. as he later admits. Only with such a disruption is the return of great art even possible. the origin of the artwork is. The first of the many challenges of comprehension presented by 'The Origin' is the question of the question. (The footnotes in the Gesamtausgabe edition of 'The Origin' represent a selection from the marginal notes Heidegger wrote on his own copies of the 1957 and 1960 editions of Holzwege. however. on the final page of The Origin' that though reflection on the character of great art cannot force its 'coming-to-be' it is. The question: what is art? 9. Given this. What is it to which Heidegger seeks to provide an answer? According to the title it is. (Heidegger was an inveterate scribbler on books. Heidegger does not believe that art always exists in a climate of a theory that moulds its character. of course. nonetheless. The greatest age of Western art.The question: what is art?
15
tution' (PLTp. made a collection of their own books on which Heidegger scribbled . p. So the thought
10
'Capable of misunderstanding this talk of origin' a 1960 footnote dryly observes (GA 5. does exist in a climate of theory . it can kill it. Heidegger says. obscure discussion. And though theory cannot make art.in pencil. hereafter. eighth.to fourth-century Greece. In the sense in which Heidegger is interested. the question of the 'origin' (Ursprung) of the artwork. therefore. according to Heidegger. p. as he sees it. 'The Origin' is Heidegger's contribution to creating the possibility of the rebirth of art. the 'indispensable preparation for the becoming of art'.10 Heidegger says that 'the origin of something is the source of its nature' (ibid. however. existed 'without a corresponding cognitive-conceptual meditation on it'. That question is. Heidegger's intention is to disrupt the prevailing theoretical climate by re-presenting an older theory of art .

It proceeds. Thus the initial question dissolves into the traditional question of the nature of (great) art. this question is a request for a definition. Heidegger's Hegelian Grundgedanke (founding idea). 18). therefore. As its Socratic form suggests. 39.) After a lot of mainly unnecessary footwork. Heidegger. is fairly obviously that which enables a work of art to count as a work of art. in a manner vaguely reminiscent of a Platonic dialogue. The initial definition. 51). philosophers have answered this question by focusing either on the creator of art (Nietzsche's approach) or on the receiver (Kant and Schopenhauer's approach) and then extrapolating to the nature of the work from their chosen vantage point. that in virtue of which an entity of a certain kind counts as being of that kind. Since art. it is hoped. (After writing 'What is a thing?'. (The reason for this. 'universal'). he is not the origin of its status as an attwork and thus not the logical origin of its 'nature' as an artwork. presumably. . says that he intends to do neither of these things but to focus instead on the work itself. Art. deepened and completed. Heidegger throws this understanding of the nature of his project into serious confusion. the last. that though the artist is undoubtedly the artwork's causal origin. the first rough and 'provisional' (PLTp. Traditionally. as philosophers say. 18). Halfway through the essay. then. . the fundamental question that 'The Origin' seeks to answer is: 'What . is the likelihood that. is only one of the ways in which 'truth happens':
. 57). Insofar as it possesses one. an 'origin' is a logical or conceptual origin. 'What is art?' might well have been Heidegger's title had Tolstoy not got there first). however. p. refined. by means of a series of attempted definitions of the artwork. Expanding the concept of art 10. surely. the property (or. 'the question of the origin of the work of art turns into a question about the nature (Wesen) of art' (PLTp. however. it seems to transpire. In the sense that interests Heidegger. the essence of art will turn out to be a psychological state and that one's philosophy of art will therefore degenerate into 'aesthetics'. this request supplies the essay with its structure. is a work of art?' (PLTp.16
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
is. is that art is the 'happening of truth' (PLT/p. on either the spectator or creator approach.

we must deny that] art. . Though it is hard to doubt that a reference to Hitler is intended here. (PLT p. all art is. Let us call events such as these. linguistic poetry. But. Art. . 62)
One might.Expanding the concept of art
17
One essential way in which truth establishes itself . as much as artworks.12 to God's covenant with the Jews. . in all its modes from architectural to poesy exhausts the nature of poetry' (PLT p. criticizing its racism. and to the crucifixion. that all and only artworks would turn out to be occasions of 'truth'. Hubert Dreyfus. 1993). . The first is that since definitions are supposed to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying that which they define. Heidegger now says. 45-6. C. i. Another way in which truth occurs is the act that founds a political state. Still another . Still another . 72).e. of course. 'poesy'. 'poetry (Dichtung)' (PLT p. why
11
12
'Heidegger on the Connection Between Nihilism. pp. (See HPN pp. 'charismatic events'. The second reason is that if truth happens outside of art it is not at all clear why we should be bothered by art's demise. says Heidegger. is the nearness of that which is not simply a being. Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . The disconcerting suggestion. Technology. one would expect. militarism and totalitarianism as well as the crassness of the Nuremburg rallies. As the 'projection' of 'truth'. it should be thought of as to the Hitler of Heidegger's 1933 hopes and dreams rather than to the reality of Nazism as it stood before his eyes at the end of 1936. following. too. 'poetry is thought of here in so broad a sense that we must leave open whether [i.e.11 think of these references as being to Hitler's founding of the Nazi state or Pericles' founding of Athenian democracy. but the being that is most of all. at p. but rather poetry in a 'broad' sense that is equivalent to the happening of truth. given the character of Heidegger's enterprise. 74). is the essential sacrifice. count as poetry in the 'broad' sense. as 'happenings of truth'. But whatever the reason. . is that charismatic events. ed. Not. This apparent allowing of the happening of truth to occur outside artworks is disconcerting for two reasons. the point here. Already in 1935. 289-316. 301. 116-17. further. in part. Essentially the same point reappears at the end of the essay.)
. then. is that 'truth happens' in great art and in charismatic events. We have yet to see why Heidegger associates 'poetry' so closely with the projection of truth (see. in the Introduction to Metaphysics. Heidegger had abandoned many of his illusions about Nazism. section 18 and especially footnote 31 below). and Politics' in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. is truth setting itself into [the] work.

the transformation of art into 'aesthetics'. Art. to thinking in a Greek way. might all count as 'artworks'. : In reality. if Heidegger is right. but rather expanding the concept to embrace 'worlddefining' events of all sorts. it is art alone that can provide the decisive antidote to the 'destitution' of our times. understand it. It follows. Artists. then. 'we [will] understand the word "art" quite generally to mean every sort of capacity to "bring forth" truth. just techne. 'the distinctiveness of art' in the modern sense is 'open to question (frage-würdig)' {GA 5. for them. bidding farewell to art. with. a medieval altarpiece. for Heidegger. p. p. p. a football match. constantly suggesting that we should accept as art works which lie outside of the domain and power of the 'art industry'. 43). along with all other modes of 'truth'-disclosure were. the Greek temple. as Heidegger puts it in a 1960 marginal comment. That he is doing this quite deliberately is made clear by the fact that at one point. a Palestrina Mass. that from Heidegger's point of view the idea that 'art' is synonymous with 'fine art' is a product of decadence. outside 'the realm of tradition and conser13
'Nihilism. That he should seek to displace this notion is. that is. The idea of 'fine art' as a distinct species first came into being in the eighteenth century. and perhaps even something not too unlike a Nuremburg rally. are constantly challenging the accepted boundaries of art. If we return. so that it corresponds to the Greek concept of techne' (N I. without regret. 82). Both art and craft. Technology. 298. Heidegger is not failing to provide a sufficient condition of art. an artificial cobbling together of disparate things? Heidegger points out in the Nietzsche study (and in many other places) that the Greeks had no concept corresponding to our notion of 'fine art'. Is a concept of art according to which a Greek temple. that is. Anything that provides what Hubert Dreyfus calls a 'cultural paradigm'13 counts. therefore.
. Yet. and Polities'. then. Greek drama and the Olympic Games are offered as equally valid examples of 'works' (PLTp. however.18
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
we should not join Hegel in. A related point is that. as an 'artwork'. as we have seen. a rock concert. 60). for Heidegger. that is. part and parcel of his enterprise of restoring us to an older and healthier conception of the nature and significance of art.

The Greek and medieval worlds both succumbed to a process of decline and fall. passed over into 'the realm of tradition and conservation' (ibid. yet is. Worlds come and go.). rather. Greek sense is the 'happening of truth'. Heidegger's revision of the notion of art looks to be quite prescient.Art as the 'opening up of world'
19
vation'. What does this mean? Heidegger's first step in elucidating this provisional definition is to replace 'happening of truth' with 'opening up of world'. 40) belongs to the Greek world. 41) to the world of medieval Christendom. 76-7). In this regard. as work. 44). Which world is it that the artwork opens up? Heidegger says: 'the work belongs. who enshroud vast public buildings and bridges may well be intending. Bamberg Cathedral (PLT p. Art. to make the Heideggerian point that art should belong. he distinguishes the Roman from the Greek and the world of 'early' from that of 'consummate' modernism. The age of modernity represents 'a new and essential world'. Art as the 'opening up of world' 11. The artwork is that in and through which 'truth happens'. 41). the age in which great art is 'dead'. but rather in the marketplace as a public 'happening of truth'. have 'decayed' and 'perished' (PLTp. in the broad. This means that worlds can happen without an artwork. the Greek. In 'The Origin' itself.14 Elsewhere. painting with a fairly broad brush. museum pieces. This means that 'is a great artwork' is a predicate which comes and goes too. in part. Those. of course. that not every 'world' possesses an artwork. Heidegger distinguishes just three (Western) worlds. The artwork is something which 'opens up a world' (PLTp. for future reference. A work.
. in a word. neither the temple nor the cathedral can do its 'work' of 'opening up' anymore. the medieval and the modern (PLT pp. Since their worlds have disappeared. for example. then. however. then. not in the museum as an object of 'aesthetic connoisseurship'. They have. The temple at Paestum (PLT p. have become. 41). ufiiquely within the world opened up Ijy itself (PLTp. can lose its greatness through 'world-withdrawal'. But it
14
Notice. an anticipation of aspects of the current avantgarde.

Paestum. it would lose its 'authentic truth' and become instead a mere 'aesthetic object' (D pp. an American Indian totem might have lost its worlddisclosing power through being removed from its site and placed in a New York museum. two ways in which an artwork may cease to do the work it once did and so lose. and so deprived of its world. Thus. In the 1960s.20
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
Plate 1 Temple of Hera II (so-called Temple of Neptune). for example. . Heidegger observes of Raphael's altarpiece known as the 'Sixtina' that it belongs to its church at Piacenza 'not merely in an historical-antiquarian sense. an African fertility symbol by being relocated on the living-room sideboard. but rather the reverse. can lose it. as Heidegger's sees it. 70-1). its greatness: either the world is withdrawn from the work or the work is withdrawn from the world. too. by. its being withdrawn from world. The painting 'is the appearing of . not world being withdrawn from it. in the nineteenth century. the place within which the sacrifice of the mass is to be celebrated' so that were it to be uprooted and relocated in a museum. then.
. but according to its pictorial essence'. There are. .

The temple. the 'aesthetic' character. though itself apparently glowing only by the grace of the sun. it does commit him to the relative triviality. For us. yet first brings to light the light of the day. victory and disgrace. Here is part of it:
A building. This resting of the work draws up out of the rock the mystery of that rock's clumsy yet spontaneous support. do not fade away into the indefinite. but 'figure' surely makes more sense here than 'temple'. and its own repose brings out the surge of the sea.What is a 'world'?
21
Notice that while the proposed connection between work and world does not commit Heidegger to the view that we cannot 'appreciate' the art of alien cultures. however. the breadth of the sky. The steadfastness of the work contrasts with the raging of the surf. The temple's firm towering makes visible the invisible space of air. of such appreciation. the darkness of the night. as we will see. The luster and gleam of the stone. the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence. a Greek temple . .
. and does so against the background of the famous 'temple' passage. The all-governing expanse of this open relational context is the world of this historical people. eagle and bull. Standing there. Standing there. . By means of the temple15 the god is present in the temple.
15 16
Hofstadter's translation is true to the German. though. endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being. The temple and its precinct. This presence of the god is in itself the extension and delimitation of the precinct as a holy precinct. the Taj Mahal is merely an 'aesthetic object'. is a 'world'? Heidegger himself poses this question. disaster and blessing.16 Tree and grass. deeply involved with the art of Zen Buddhism is a measure of the profundity of the changes that occurred as he proceeded down his 'path of thinking' about art. in the 1950s. Only from this expanse does a people first return to itself for the fulfillment of its vocation. and in this concealment lets it stand out into the holy precinct through the open portico.) What is a 'world'? 12. stands there in the middle of the rock-cleft valley. The building encloses the figure of the god. Hofstadter transposes 'raging' and 'surge' in a way that suggests someone who has never seen the sea. (That. . unless we become something a great deal more than tourists. the building rests on the rocky ground. . What. snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive shapes and thus come to appear as what they are . Heidegger became. It is the temple-work that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death.

In subsequent chapters we will repeatedly encounter Heidegger's preference for philosophizing by way of interpreting poetic texts. he. of Sophocles Rilke.17 a major restatement in section 44 of Being and Time}* a significantly developed restatement in the 1930 'Essence of Truth' (BWpp. The fundamental insight contained in the theory is that truth as 'correspondence' or 'adequacy' to the facts . since Roman times. in The Origin' itself (pp. I believe. provides his own text (a text we will shortly see to be modelled on Rilke's evocation of the world of his childhood in the work mentioned in footnote 1). . in my view. Hölderlin.which is why Heidegger says it constitutes the beginning of 'the turn' (BWp.the account of truth offered. those. 1997). . R. What kind of space? Since 'world' is the same as 'truth' . 13. A helpful 'take' on his 'path of thinking' is to see it as a continuous attempt to fully think through the implications of his own theory of truth. an intuitive understanding which the remainder of the essay will attempt to articulate philosophically. 'world' is the 'all-governing .the 'truth of beings' or 'being of beings' as Heidegger also puts it (PLT p.but their full appropriation required. I would argue. Trakl.the root understanding of 'world' lies in Heidegger's theory of truth. is poetic rather than analytic. for example. 39) .actually presupposes
17 18
In Plato's Sophist. According to the passage. its implications. like that of the equally famous (but largely irrelevant) evocation of Van Gogh's painting of shoes {PUTpp. 113^42) and. first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves. are not there properly understood. a kind of space. as it were. a theory which received its first statement in 1925. is to provide an intuitive entry into the experience the Greek might have had before his temple. Rojcewicz and Andre Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. George and. by the philosophical tradition . above all. {PUT pp. In The Origin' however. from a literalist reading of the temple passage.
. 33-4). The 1930 'Essence of Truth' represents a considerable advance in appropriating those implications into his philosophy as a whole . 41-3)
It is important to be conscious of the fact that the overall character of this beautiful passage. the rest of Heidegger's philosophical career. I suggest. Though stated in Being and Time. 50-5). open relational context' of an 'historical' culture. A great deal of misreading of The Origin' derives. more briefly. tr. Its purpose. 208) .22
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
in its standing there.

In sum. They are embodied in what Heidegger calls 'language' (see further section 18 below). Or maybe I refer to the demigod whose residence is just that place. Heidegger. first makes it possible. but rather the space-time region they exactly occupy. the entry conditions. which he sometimes writes 'a-letheid to highlight the idea of the foundation of truth as consisting in a coming-out-of-oblivion. 51). A further possibility is that what I am talking about is neither the table nor the collection of molecules. he thinks of world (or at least Western) history as divided up. as we have seen. and usually unnoticed understanding which determines for the members of an historical culture what. not to the table. thinks of every human being as born into a very fundamental. 'world' is the background. It constitutes. Suppose I say. fundamentally. ä la Hegel. Heidegger calls this 'truth as disclosure' or 'aletheid (PLTp. 63) horizon of disclosure . Only when we know what kinds of beings belong to a given domain of discourse do we know what kinds of facts there are to which propositions may or may not correspond. 'Smith is colourless. through disambiguation. of course.' It might seem obvious that I say something false. 'transcendental' (DTp. or may not. there is. But suppose that (for my own arcane reasons) I am actually referring. then. pointing at Smith. into quite sharply distinct epochs. My example. correspond. as it were. Consider this table on which I write.and it is this that he calls 'world'. historical 'worlds'. hence his frequently repeated remark that 'language is the house of being'. The point this example makes is that truth as correspondence presupposes reference. the ground plan. And so on. Let us call it 'Smith'. however.as it were. These historical worlds (Heidegger also speaks of 'the clearing' and 'the open') are defined and distinguished by different horizons of disclosure. highlights issues of reference of a relatively localized kind. the horizon of all one's horizons .What is a 'world'?
23
a more 'primordial' truth which has the task of establishing what kind of 'facts' there are to which statements may. After 1930. and reference presupposes .a 'horizon of disclosure' which.a point often overlooked . the 'being of beings'. In the first version of 'The Origin' Heidegger calls world a 'framework
. but rather to the collection of molecules which Smith also is. which something must satisfy in order to show up as a being in the world in question. for them.

The important thing here about understanding one's world. the broad outline of the 'simple and essential decisions' (PLT p. when the artwork opens up our world for us we understand 'what is holy and what unholy' (ibid. 44). think of understanding one's world as possession of a kind of metaphysical map (world.
. It 'opens up . is a kind of space). Hofstadter's 'flighty' reveals the dangers of translating into a language of which one is not a native speaker. pp. the being T of beings' (PLT p. 48) which constitute. for us. to understand what. The Greek 'map' would divide the world into (at least) earth (inhabited by mortals) and sky (inhabited by gods) (later Heidegger calls this 'the fourfold'). 42). In general. Heidegger's presentation of world seems to be focused not on ontology but rather on ethics.
19 20
'Von Ursprung des Kunstwerks: Erste Ausarbeitung'. 225-39). heaven (gods) and hell (souls of the damned).e. fundamental ethos. our. 1998. not on what is but rather on what ought to be the case. We may call this the 'ontological' aspect of world. then. Heidegger Studies 14. 'what is brave and what cowardly. 84). a map detailing both the regions of being and the kinds of beings that dwell there. what noble (edel) and what fugitive (flüchtig20). 6-22. what master and what slave' (PLT p. the necessity for the grounding of the latter in the former. and the 'Letter on Humanism' (BWpp. remember. there is. a map that is internalized by all fully-fledged members of the culture. of 'being5 and 'the ought5. however. 'make[s] manifest' what 'beings as a whole [i. We could. the proper way to live. . p. (See especially the Introduction to Metaphysics.). fundamentally. In and around the temple passage.24
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
for the present-at-hand'. Heidegger often appeals to this conception in describing the disclosive activity of the artwork. To understand one's world is.) There are two aspects to this claim which I shall discuss in turn: the claim that ontology is necessary to the grounding of ethics. 196-9. pp. the medieval into earth (mortals). is understanding the difference between 'victory and disgrace'. 'the shape of destiny for human being' (PLTp. The work. he says. as an organized structure] are' ( V I. then. This dual character of world reflects a thesis fundamental to all phases of Heidegger's thinking: the inseparability of ontology and ethics. and the claim that it is sufficient. .19 echoing Being and Time's description of world as an 'ontological structure' (BT1A-5). as I shall call it. 39).

Heidegger attacks this position. in particular. Sartre's notion that one must choose one's own fundamental values . in brief. the domain of 'moral facts'. again. by which he means values divorced from facts. values are expelled from that domain then. then moral nihilism sets in.Ontology and ethics
25
Ontology and ethics 14. Modern thinking. in Kant's language. 'Values'. inevitably.then. one can simply unfabricate. The realm of being. popular among his German con-
. so moral 'intuitionists' insist. is that only 'the grounding of man's historical existence on beings as a whole' (NI. as Heidegger puts it in the 'Letter on Humanism'. is the following. the 'unconditional' character of genuinely ethical authority. What follows from this. once it becomes no mere philosopher's theory but rather the way in which people in general experience the values of their culture. thinking which has its beginnings in Plato's separation between the form of the good and the other forms. 90) can establish an authoritative ethic. the 'is' and the 'ought'. here. what we discover. he concludes. the realm of human invention or. That killing is wrong is something we 'perceive' rather than choose to be the case yet not on account of perceiving anything about the nonmoral domain. for us. a third domain. 142). completely separate from the domain of non-moral facts. if the going gets tough. then. however. are yet autonomous. they lack genuine authority. on the other hand. Once such a dichotomy sets in. 279). dominated by the separation between fact and value. an authority which is quite different from. If. 'fabrication' (BW p. says Heidegger. As such. they cannot be genuinely authoritative for us. unchoose them so that. while being fully objective. one's values are one's own fabrications Heidegger is attacking. 'no one dies for mere values' (gCTp. There is. facts which. Heidegger holds. p. constitutes. and so independent of human choice. they become assigned to the realm of what we make to be the case. between in Hume's-language. is. simply acknowledge to be the case. If. of 'fact'. The reason. If they are someone else's fabrications then their only source of authority is the power of the other. however. It might be objected to this that the choice between assigning values to either the domain of beings or the domain of choice is not one we have to make. are 'impotent'.

And again: he who properly understands the 'truth of beings as a whole' knows his own 'position in the midst of beings' (N I. then. 15. Rather. to resort to power. in this sense. It is. one's. Heidegger quotes Heraclitus as saying. a feature of the Greek world Heidegger emphasizes through his repeated quotations of the Heraclitus fragment 53: 'polemos' (usually translated as 'conflict'. to lend spurious authority to what are. 206-8. Someone who does not have the same moral 'perceptions' as themselves they are compelled to abuse as morally deviant. 67). linking together the idea of a physical (or metaphysical) space with that of a moral space. I think. of course. on the other it is to know one's moral position. On the one hand to know one's position is to know one's latitude and longitude. 'Position' is. means the same as 'station' as it occurs in the Victorian-sounding phrase 'my station and its duties'. also 'practical'. That he is right about this can. necessary to a genuinely authoritative ethics. a spatial concept. But it is also. They are compelled. in reality. one's rights and duties. 'he who truly knows what is knows what he wills to do in the midst of what is' (PLT p. in other words. upon will and action. p.26
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
temporaries. he says. But Heidegger also claims that it is sufficient.21 in the Introduction to Metaphysics (pp. Properly understanding one's world does not. 88). To try to understand this claim let us focus on the word 'position' as it occurs in 'position in the midst of beings'. A grounding in ontology is. rather. through obfuscating their origins. It is. as one might put it. moral 'latitude and longitude'. simply an attempt. a 'straddling' notion. be gathered by examining the response of 'intuitionists' to disagreement. Proper knowledge of one's 'ontology' is no merely 'theoretical' accomplishment. 'consist in mere information and notions about something'. nothing but human fabrications. in a decisive way. as it were. defective in their capacity for moral perception.
. Position entails structure. he suggests. usually hierarchy. 198-9). 'war' or 'strife') is.
21
See HPN pp. It bears. Position. thereby unmasking the true and sole authority behind their fabrications.

but with Heidegger's hyphen. or appropriate life for oneself. then. 'freemen'. ('Polls'. For it makes some to appear as gods. others as men. It is this. . but (also) for all the dominant preserver.Ontology and ethics
27
for all (that is present) the creator that causes to emerge. it is. since it is 'from this site and place (Statt) [that] there springs forth whatever is in
. the 'place and scene of history' (IM p. says Heidegger. others as free men. 152). In the 1942 Ister lectures he puts the point in a more Greek way. fragment 53)' (PLTp. what master and what slave (cf. it creates (shows) some as slaves. expanding on Heraclitus. Thought of in a properly Greek way. the Greek 'world'. in the Greek polls. that 'he who truly knows what is. rather. 61-2. to repeat. he says. is inadequately translated as 'city state'.) Understanding our world we understand ourselves to be located within a structure of which some of the nodal points can be represented as follows:
gods rulers citizens slaves
Heidegger says. Heidegger here parses polemos as Aus-elnandersetzung . in other words. . citizens. To truly understand the polls is to understand what it is that is the 'fitting'. (/Mp. which
first caused the realm of being to separate into opposites. 43). 'setting apart' or 'establishment of difference'. Heidegger's interpolations in parentheses)
This is the passage alluded to in 'The Origin' when Heidegger says that the Greek artwork makes manifest 'what is holy and what unholy. what noble and what fugitive.in ordinary German 'encounter' or 'confrontation'. (IM pp. it first gives rise to position and order and rank . In th[is] Aus-einandersetzung world comes into being.62)
Let us suppose ourselves to be. what great and what small. knows what he wills in the midst of what is'. Heraclitus.

) Part of knowing what a god or ruler is is knowing the kind of behaviour that is appropriate to his presence. Sophocles' Antigone. in other words that fully understanding one's world is not only knowing the 'fitting' life but also being motivated to lead such a life. citizens
22
23
In ordinary German 'gestatte? means 'permitted'. am not Greek but a 'barbarian'. however. the structure that is one's world is knowing. Of course sometimes the honour that is due to the gods and their 'laws' (HE p. the kind of life that is appropriate to one's station in it. (Heidegger. in general. rulers. ruler. for example. in other words. (I have. that the right life is the 'fitting'.28
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
place {gestattet)22 and whatever is not. the life that is 'in place' in one's place. that my fellow citizens are to be treated differently from slaves. at least in Heidegger's reading. then I do not properly understand what a god. In the 'Letter on Humanism' Heidegger claims that thought in a properly Greek way 'ethos' simply means 'place'. Thus positioned as I am.and the places they visit . 'knows what he wills in the midst of what is'. Heidegger is trying here to point to an etymological link between place and ethos. to suggest that the ethical is what belongs to the place. to gods. 312) conflicts with the obedience owed to rulers. in general. what is order and what is disorder. 'place of dwelling (Aufenthalt des WohnensY (BWp. in a given world. I know. If I do not understand that authentic gods . Yet one could.23 Knowing. what is fitting and what is unfitting' {Ister p. says that he who properly knows 'what is'. an inadequate command of the 'language'. or as we would say 'appropriate' life. 82).
.are to be honoured. 233). surely. that I am under the following kinds of obligations:
gods rulers citizens slaves
The 'simple and essential decisions' that are the outline of my proper life are determined by my position in the structure which is my world. is about this conflict. that rulers are to be obeyed. perfectly well know the kind of behaviour appropriate. or citizen is.

. to 'open up' a world? There is. a great deal of emphasis on the idea of 'firstness'. . though absolutely crucial to one's overall reading of the work. is knowing where and so who you are. 78) . which endows those who properly and fully belong to that world with a moral identity. in standing there first gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves.
. an identity which gives purpose and meaning to their lives. By emphasizing certain passages over others it is..'origin' but. 'Being-in-the-world'.
24
See HPN pp. as I shall call it. rather. concede that. (my emphases)
This repeated emphasis. . by. . The next question is: what is it for an artwork to 'make manifest'. the world of this historical people . gathers around itself . . quite possible to present a Promethean reading that is both plausible and coherent.first brings to light the light of the day . 'Promethean' view that art creates world.) What is 'opening up'? 16. This shows that there is more to 'truly know what is' than has yet appeared. (a refined version of) the Nuremburg rally. . with Heidegger's hyphen. The attribution to Heidegger of such a view has important political implications: it has led to 'The Origin"s being read as a thinly disguised plea for the overcoming of European nihilism through the coming into being of a brave new world to be established by the Hitler-created artwork. beings of different 'rank'. [allows] tree and grass. a structure of beings. I think. in the temple passage. eagle and snake and cricket first to enter their distinctive shape .24 In what follows. a 'world' is not to be thought of as a collection of objects. and what you have to do.has led to The Origin"s being read as affirming the. It is.
first. to repeat. The temple. however. the matter is difficult and obscure. The temple. 77) and an 'Ursprung7 (PLT p. . I must. 'primal leap' . 109-14. in the language of Being and Time. in a word. . What more I shall discuss in section 24 below. I am going to argue against the Promethean reading of 'The Origin'.What is 'opening up'?
29
and so on yet still be disinclined to act in the appropriate way. To summarize. then.. together with Heidegger's talk of art as a 'beginning' {PLT p.

for example. seen the error of his flirtation and returned. and Polities'. almost certainly as a response to the spirit and rhetoric of Nazism. fundamental positions worked out in Being and Time demand the rejection of Prometheanism. 'that which genuinely is' (gCTp. decisively. if I understand him.26 By the time of the final draft of The Origin'. The first difficulty for the Promethean reading is that. does this.he had.30
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
Hubert Dreyfus. Heidegger in fact says this: the 'founding of Being27 for
25 26 27
In 'Nihilism. whether or not some artwork might have created the Greek world. This ambiguity makes 'Sein' ambiguous between 'Being'. But in the case of the Greek temple it. half-forgetting fundamental commitments established in Being and Time (1927). surely. As Heidegger. The Emperor Augustus. later the wooden hut to enclose and protect the altar. 111) . But the economy of expression in no way makes up for
.was in place well before the construction of the temples then. I think. Heidegger flirted with Prometheanism from about 1933 to 1936. My view is that. to the insights of Being and Time. certain passages in the Introduction to Metaphysics as well as. concerned to preserve his authority and with it the integrity of the Roman Empire. it is extremely difficult to see how it could have been the temple. 44). Technology. he means both genitives and both senses of Sein. earlier drafts of The Origin'. of course. 18). And if Greek theology . A weakness in HPN is that I did not. The infuriating things about Heidegger's frequent use of genitive phrases such as 'house of B/being'. Though.one and the same as Greek mythology. of course. when he does not disambiguate by means of the 'Sein'-Seyrf convention (see Introduction section 4 above). then the open-air altar. declared himself a god and ordered altars to himself to be constructed throughout the empire. here. 'truth if B/being'. behind the stone temple of the sixth century lay a long history of development: first the sacred site. however . as I shall shortly show. as Jacques Taminiaux shows (see footnote 2 above). and 'being'. our 'take' on reality (Most often. 'founding of B/being' is that they are almost always ambiguous between the objective and subjective genitive ('Tales of Hoffman' construed as 'Tales about Hoffman' is an objective genitive while construed as 'Tales told by Hoffman' is a subjective genitive). I think. 'openness of B/being' and. did. well knew. Theology does not always precede the sacred building. Art. found the matter difficult and confusing.25 Heidegger himself. acknowledge this flirtation.here again I am in basic agreement with Taminiaux . and finally the magnificent re-presentation of the hut (and the Greek home) in the medium of stone. I believe. in other words 'reality' ( g C T p . seem to affirm it. so was the Greek 'world'. there. Heidegger says {Ister p.

(This is a footnote for scholars. If. however. as we will see.) In the present case. sharing in Henry's tension on the eve of Agincourt. poetically. that is to say. . we do not know the outcome of the battle. I think. or by the worship occurring in it. The idea of firstness is often associated with profound.29
Again. since Heidegger here uses 'Seyn\ I take the genitive to be a subjective one: since being but not Being can be 'founded'. . It is not essential. before our very eyes. it might be asked. 'originating in the saying (Sagen) of the people does not talk about (reden über)9 'the battle of the new gods against the old'. does not refer back to some well-known event in the (mythological) past.another word Heidegger uses. Cezanne's paintings have been said to present us with the world 'on the day of creation'.before our very eyes. the 'simple and essential' outlines of his world present themselves to
the loss of clarity. a couple of centuries before the temple was even a twinkle in an architect's eye. If the repetition of 'first' in the temple passage is not to be read in the Promethean way how. It creates anew the universe after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrent impressions of blunted familiarity. for example. Profoundly moved by the temple. 43). is 'destining' . p. Phenomenologically speaking. the struggle between Henry and the French is being decided for the first time. tells us that this is how firstness is to be understood. 184) . Rather.) The dubiousness of the idea that not just the Greek but the Western (in other words.in other words. art-mediated experience. And Alfred Brendel's performances of the Beethoven piano sonatas have been movingly and accurately described as 'admitting us into the act of creation itself. Quoted in The Times Literary Supplement 5016. Greek tragedy.
28 29
. we become absorbed by a performance of Henry Kthen. Shelley. for example wrote that the essence of poetry is that it
purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our b e i n g . 'Being' needs to be read as the subject which (through Homer) completes the founding of . our) world was somehowfully in place in the eighth century BC is a matter to which I shall return. 14-15. as I have already intimated. 21 May 1999.our world. pp. The drama. is it to be read? The answer is. he says. Rather 'it transforms the people's saying so that now every essential wordfightsthe battle and puts up for decision what is holy and what unholy' (PLTp. the issue of what is holy and unholy is being decided right now .What is 'opening up'?
28
31
Western humanity (Dasein) completed itself with Homer' (GA 39. Heidegger himself. Similarly the Greek.

over and over again. and the open. is nothing but the elementary emergence into words. For the cobbler. Along the whole wall. which like Being and Time belongs to 1927. of existence as being-in-the-world. to verbalize it. Throughout his life. as already intimated. however. 'for the first time'. depends on that complexly interconnected totality of human practices which provides shoes with the function which makes them shoes. 'world' is the same as the 'thrownness' which every human being {Dasein). known. Being human means 'already being-in (a world)' (BT 327). In the Basic Problems of Phenomenology. never explicitly. and thereby make it expressly visible for others' (my emphasis). Since the 'intelligibility' of shoes. it is inconsistent with fundamental positions Heidegger had already worked out in Being and Time.' To illustrate the point.one might think. the artistic or religious person repeatedly experiences his world 'for the first time'. Only 'original' Dasein is able 'to see expressly the world that is always already unveiled with its existence. The second reason the Promethean reading of 'The Origin' is untenable is that.32
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
him. It does so in a passage (BP pp. as it grows to adulthood. here. there still remained a dirtywhite area. In Being and Time. 171-3) which begins by repeating Being and Time's thesis: 'as existent we already understand world beforehand'. Rilke's evocation proceeds by expounding the context in which the remaining walls of a demolished house had been the walls that they were: You could see the walls of the rooms on the different stories to which the wallpaper was still attached and here and there the place where theflooror ceiling began. of the emphasis on the importance of regularity of worship in Christian practice . for 'average everydayness'. merely implicitly. only his prior understanding of world allows the cobbler to understand what he is doing. the becoming-uncovered. Heidegger connects the latter work's doctrine about world explicitly to art. rust-stained furrow of the toilet pipe crept through it in
. creative literature. 17. in pristine freshness. next to the walls of the rooms. world is shrouded in background 'inconspicuousness' (BT 70). 'Poetry. finds itself 'already' in. And then Heidegger identifies who 'original' Dasein is. for example. And they do this . he quotes Rilke's evocation of the world of the urban squalor of late nineteenth-century Prague in which he was brought up.

. as I suggest. unaware. to 'thematize' a world which is already in existence. as Being and Time's discussion of 'world' puts it. . soft. In fact. Rilke . too.unless the Heidegger of 1936 rejected these ideas of 1927 .) What follows. The artwork's 'opening up of the open'. in our 'average everydayness'. it was still there .Heidegger presents the object in such a way as to thematize the world or 'environmentality' (BT 60) to which the shoes and the temple belong.. the fusel-oil smell of fermenting feet. 'everything that already is' 'for an historical people'. so I suggest. This passage is very important since it contains. 'firstness'.here 'The Origin' repeats Being and Time's thesis of the normal 'inconspicuousness' of world . with art in the Rilke passage. the model for both the Van Gogh shoes and the temple passages in 'The Origin' (notice the shoe link between it and the Van Gogh). in other words. 44). . namely. gray dust traces were left at the edges of the ceiling . that of which we are. is already cast'. . Since everyday
.. as historical. and the sultriness from beds of pubescent boys. 'though still hidden from [unthematized by] itself (PLT p.Rilke calls it life . to render 'expressly visible'. consciously reusing Being and Time's technical terminology. But that 'thrownness' is .. Unlike shoes. (Notice. it says. Of the paths taken by the illuminating gas. Heidegger did not finally reject these products of his early thinking since they reappear.leaps towards us from the things' that the poet describes. like those of a digesting worm. In both passages imitating. The point here concerns. The tenacious life of these rooms refused to let itself be trampled down . 'is the opening up of that into which human being.. 'world is never an object that stands before us and can be seen' but is rather. as indicated. quite explicitly. .being-in-the-world . . The cobbler knows world implicitly since he knows what shoes are. But he does not know that he knows. 'Genuinely poetic projection'. 75). 'makes its advent in thrownness' (PLT p. the association of 'originality'.. There stood the noon days and the illnesses. an earlier period of confusion. 'thematizing' (BT 74-5). 71). in spite of.not an 'object'. the expirings and the smoke of years. 'ever non-objective' (PLT p. then. is that .What is 'opening up'?
33
unspeakably nauseating movements.
Heidegger asks us to notice (his quotation of Rilke is much longer than this) 'in how elemental a way the world . it says.the role of the artwork is not to create but rather to 'make expressly visible'. in the final version of 'The Origin' itself. It takes the 'original' eye of the artist to 'thematize'.

The artwork makes its advent 'within the clearing of what is. which Heidegger embodies in the slogan that 'language is the house of being'. not Promethean creation but rather. all Heidegger means by 'language is poetry' is that language posits rather than christens beings. however. pp. In the Introduction to Metaphysics: Thought and Poetry of 1944. it 'make[s] manifest' (N I.34
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
consciousness is geared to objects. In the 'Germania' lectures Heidegger says that 'poetry is the primordial language (Ursprache) of a people' (GA 39. 88) the normally implicit. p. This kind of language is repeated throughout the writings of late 1936. what does? Heidegger's answer to this question is clear: not the artwork but rather 'language' creates world. 'language creates world' becomes 'poetry is the inaugural naming of> the gods and of the essence of things' (HE p. The artwork's 'opening up' of world is. Actually. 74). p.the whole world is the creation of his 'will to power' {GA 50. 'poeticizes' them. 'articulates' (iVT. the 'originality' of the artwork. This represents some version of what can be called 'linguistic Kantianism' . is well aware of this Nietzschean use of 'poeticize'. 109-10). that it. 306). to make it 'visible5. 74). Heidegger says that the essence of language is the 'name'. however. naming is 'the establishing of being by means of the word' (HE p. p. the artwork does not create its world. this looks to say that world is the creation of the poet and seems to take us back once more to the Promethean understanding of the work-world relationship. 18. Given this identification. Homer perhaps. he explains that Nietzsche calls man a 'poet' since . 74). 64).so Heidegger reads Nietzsche . it might be asked. Since 'poetry' seems to presuppose a poet. this is why it requires something special.a fairly routine position for any post-Kantian German philosopher. as the creator of the West. Rather. in a use of the word introduced by Nietzsche. This raises the spectre of the ur-poet. then. The artwork 'clears' what normally 'veils and withdraws itself (PLTp. Contrary to naive assumptions.
. What. of course. however. 'thematizing'. If. a name does not christen something 'already in existence. is 'language'? Heidegger manages to confuse the situation by calling it poetry (Dichtung) (PLTp. which has already happened unnoticed in language' (PLTp. 304).30 'Language is poetry' means
30
Heidegger. 84) the normally obscured. 'making expressly visible'. In 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry'.

analogous to the way in which a system of map-making 'projects' its 'world'. As such. actions and commentaries on actions which constitutes. things. poetry in the 'broad'. W^hat this says about the nature of 'language' is. then. what does bring 'language' into being? Heidegger says. as it is always inclined to do.What is 'opening up'?
35
that language does not simply acknowledge world but rather 'projects' it . Language is 'poetry' because. it encourages the Promethean reading of the role of the artist. 312). a complex integration of words. I suggest. 'essential' sense (PLTp. to think of 'language' as the creation of some ur-poet. I believe. it is not the creation of any individual or even 'committee' of individuals (compare QCT p. that world is the creation of any artist. remember. qua philosophically interesting. in a word. And. in a marginal comment of 1960. nothing is more important to him than this distinction. moods. First.
. Second. 'The Voice of the People'. to appear as 'poetry'. in 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry'. in Wittgenstein's phrase. We do not need. is simply defined as any kind of 'projective saying' (ibid. as we will see. with all these deficiencies in mind. of words and things and actions that slowly comes together and grows into a comprehensive way of life. a related point. social practice. therefore. thinking that 'projective saying' captures the 'essence' of poetry prevents Heidegger from paying proper attention to the difference between poetry and prose. rather. 59).) It is. once he starts to think properly about the nature of poetic language as such. feelings. but is.)?1 In brief. world-creating ('constructing'. he calls 'The Origin"s use of 'poetry' 'questionable' and 'inadequate' (GA 5. it allows. that it is. a
31
The decision to use 'poetry' in this Nietzschean way in an essay on art was a bad one for at least three reasons. 'language is poetry' is neither more nor less than a (in the context of a discussion of art confusing) statement of linguistic Kantianism. for example quantum mechanics. in today's jargon) phenomenon. 'originating in the saying (Sagen) of the people'. 23). it is a 'conversation {Gespräch)' (HE p. poetry at this period in Heidegger's thinking. It does not imply that 'language' is a creator-implying artwork nor. The poet's task is not to create the people's voice but to 'remind' them of it when. 43). 301). But if not the poet. 74). an integration. p. Heidegger repeats this point in 'The Origin' itself when he says that 'the linguistic work'. that. language is not to be understood as an abstract system of vocabulary and rules of syntax. brings that saying to vivid presence (PLTp. then. I suggest. Greek tragedy. it 'grows dumb and weary' (HE p. (Later on. third. in the title of one of Hölderlin's poems. very much what section 34 of Being and Time says. that. Rather.

simplified and transfigured .. At least no human artists. if disposed to metaphor. turning the sinner into a great. 42) that allows them to be the objects that they are. only they have taught us the art of viewing ourselves as heroes . never the background 'framework' (PLT p. something whose genesis lies in neither individual or collective human intention but in. As such it is something we receive rather than create. Two questions now confront us. By surrounding him with eternal perspectives.an artist whose artwork is himself. Only in this way can we deal with some base details in ourselves. and especially those of the [Greek?] theatre. section 78. First. tr. in Nietzsche's case] a similar merit to the religion that made man see the sinfulness of every single individual through a magnifying glass.32 The Gay Science. to bring the 'inconspicuous' into salience. as it were. 'never an object that stands before us and can be seen' (PLT p. how does the artwork disrupt its inconspicuousness? Heidegger says. to render explicit. I believe. only they have taught us to esteem the hero that is concealed in everyday characters. but rather 'language' creates world. too. as we have seen. and reality itself. in his own way.only artists. . Not the artwork. by Nietzsche. What we notice in everyday life are the 'objects' of our practical concerns. is one that was also seen. that 'world' does not belong among things with which we are 'familiar' since it is 'ever non-objective'. Perhaps one should concede [grudgingly.as follows:
What should win our gratitude . immortal criminal. In Heidegger's way of speaking they are 'sent' or 'destined' to us by Being. why is it that 'world' is normally inconspicuous? Second. it taught man to see himself from a distance and as something past and whole. have given men eyes and ears to see and hear with some pleasure what each man is . one might. Without this art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast. then. therefore. rather. Heidegger's point. Nietzsche writes . think of the relation of Being to world as that of artist to work .
.the art of staging and watching ourselves. There are. Languages constitutive of historical cultures are always. 19. W. extraintentional reality. 44). The artwork's role is not to create but rather to thematize. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Press.notice that he. sees that art has something to do with overcoming the everyday inconspicuousness of world .36
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
'form of life'.from a distance and. 1974). no Promethean artists involved in the creation of world by language. 'natural' rather than 'artificial' (or artifactual) languages. as we say.

When we come under the power of the work we undergo. 48)33 that constitute our world. so close up to our lives that we lose ourselves in a maze of everyday details. The 'essential' 'withdraws itself into a 'veil[ed]' and 'dim confusion' (PLTp.
33
34
It is essential to realize that the use of the word 'decision'. History. 146). out of Being and Time's 'average everydayness'. we lose sight of the 'simple and essential decisions' (PLT p. a word is camouflaged by random letters thus:
azomanopt. Heidegger is very careful to distinguish two modes of concealment: concealment by the clearing of world .and concealment within the clearing. the assignment to finish that is already late. thereby. and into 'the openness of beings' of which it is the locus (PLT p. demands and decisions. the way the originary essence of truth essentially unfolds' (P p. in (to my mind relatively useless) foreign-vocabulary-learning exercises. The car. not us. I think. 54).concealment of all those alternative 'horizons of disclosure' which are occluded by our current one .
. here. Heidegger speaks of the 'clearing' as permeated by 'concealment'34 or 'dissembling' (PLT p. In worrying about the train to catch. lose sight of the wood on account of the trees. fails to start.What is 'opening up'?
37
In everyday life we are. it does. Only the latter is 'dissembling' (PLT p. one is likely to become suddenly aware of the network of life-connections that is one's world and in which the car plays a vital role. In such a situation. In Being and Time Heidegger speaks of situations in which some kind of breakdown interrupts the smooth flow of everyday existence as the point at which world stands forth out of its usual inconspicuousness (BT 74-5). Though 'The Origin' does not think of the artwork as any kind of breakdown. The work 'transports] us out of the realm of the ordinary'. and only dissembling concerns us in the present context. for example. in other words Being in its 'destining'. 'decides' on our world. Everyday life camouflages our foundational values in somewhat the way in which. 74). lends no support whatever to the Promethean reading of 'The Origin'. 66).
In daily life what vanishes from our existence are the 'simple and essential' meanings which establish our 'position in the midst of beings' and give. Heidegger says. he suggests. is 'camouflage'. think of world becoming conspicuous when and only when the flow of everyday existence is disrupted. 'displacement'. The best word to use here. What Heidegger is referring to are 'the rare and the simple decisions of history [which] arise [not from any human being but] from. 60). as it were. meaning and direction to our lives. the morning's quarrel over the washing up and how it is to be resolved. in a similar way.

towards us') 'the earth' (PLT p. halfway through the essay. harassed and compromised by the seeming urgencies of daily existence. Heidegger's Grundgedanke. just do that. he now says. this virtue. dispersed. It also 'sets forth' (herstellen . let us remember.or rather the worship that occurs in it . 44). Somewhat in the way in which a normally inconspicuous object is brought to salience by being put on exhibition. revising and expanding the definition of the artwork.'earth'. that it is the principle of holiness. so I shall argue. Nietzsche grudgingly concedes to Christianity. places it 'on display'. invests it with 'dignity and splendour'. is that the artwork is the 'happening of truth'. The artwork. brings its world to charismatic salience. so the work can be thought of as putting its world 'on exhibition'. 43). of the way in which the clarity and simplicity of the Creed and the Mass restores the individual. brings it out of inconspicuousness and into salience. that Heidegger introduces into the discussion an entirely new term .literally. says Heidegger. The fundamental character of 'earth' as it occurs in 'The Origin' is. Heidegger introduces earth by. The artwork. But it does not. to the 'simple and essential decisions' of the Christian life.in Christian practice. I believe. does not merely 'set up' a world. then. What is the effect of this revision? What does 'earth' mean? 21. 46). To illustrate this phenomenon one might. for example. as we noted. The heart of his conception of the work must.
. The work. It is to do justice to this aspect of the work. allows it to stand forth 'as holy' (PLT p. The setting up is not 'bare placing'. 'places here. the work 'consecrates' its world. distracted. Rather. as one might put it. think of the role played by the church . What is 'earth'? 20.38
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
How does this disruption of the 'dim confusion' of everydayness in which world 'veils and withdraws itself happen? Heidegger introduces the verb 'setting up {aufstellen)' as a synonym for 'opening up' on the basis of the fact that the opening up of world bears a partial analogy to the 'setting up' of something on display in an exhibition (Ausstellung) (PLT p. 'sets up' a world. In spite of his hostility.

one and the same.disclosed as a duck. Let us. also says. to be.What is 'earth*?
39
therefore. 'region of Being'. disclosed in the manner of atomic physics cannot be disclosed as everyday objects. as we may call it. we know that belonging to our 'truth'. For one horizon of disclosure to be inhabited. Even if we confine ourselves just to disclosures of Smith which we contemporary human beings can make intelligible to ourselves. through reflection on the character of truth. for example. alternative horizons of disclosure. the horizon of all our horizons. presupposes truth as disclosure. truth as 'aletheia\ Such a disclosure is embodied in a 'language' and constitutes a 'world'. 304) . George may be disclosed as a table. a cubist portrait allows us to inhabit several visual perspectives at the same time. return briefly to that account. cannot simultaneously be disclosed as a rabbit. 'concealment'. This means that. Arguably. The world-earth duality. is introduced to correspond to a duality in that account. however. Just as the ambiguousfigure. as Heidegger puts it. just any old 'perspective' on things. on occasion. I shall argue. It is. 'World' is.
. 'perspective' (P p. as it were. be inhabited at any one time. 60). a space-time position or as the house of a god. occluded. Yet representation occurs.or as. the outermost limit (like Kant's 'categories') of what. therefore. of course. in the sense of 'world'. we know (from section 13 above). is an indefinitely large totality of other possible 'truths'. to us. not just any 'horizon'. a congregation of molecules. post-Renaissance conventions of visual intelligibility which exclude indefinitely many alternative languages': the language. Heidegger. can have a number of different disclosures. 55. of Maori art. favoured. Truth is thus always. Only one disclosure .35 Yet the axiom that truth implies concealment applies to it too. is for all others to be 'denied' or 'refused' (PLT pp. nonetheless. the horizon within which all perspectives available to us are contained. 64-5) that are equally
35
This is the reason that cubism is not a counter-example to the principle that truth is always concealment. 'views' disclosing other 'sides' of our world of beings (DT pp. even if we leave aside the possibility that Martian physics might disclose him in ways utterly unintelligible to us. so Being. as I put it. lie in his account of truth. Truth as correspondence. is intelligible. following Nietzsche. within specific.may. As we saw in my (rather drab) 'Smith' example. it is clear that there is no upper limit to the number of possible disclosures a region of Being may receive.

For this reason he prefers Hölderlin's terminology to Nietzsche's. as we will see. . on the one hand. yet blocked by our disclosure and. 117). . noting that on the Rilke image. 1992). is that which is 'closed . Being is thus 'world' and 'earth' taken together. . 'earth'.p. it resembles the moon: behind the side illuminated by and for us lies an immeasurable . as it were. GA4. concealed. In an image which later Heidegger takes over from Rilke. is uniquely Being' (QCT p. 29(M). which Heidegger calls 'earth'.36 itself. 136) . pp. beyond intelligibility. p.'ungraspable' (Ister p. prefers to express it as a distinction between 'clarity of presentation (Klarheit der Darstellung)'. not [conceptually] mastered . 'unfathomable darkness'. under Hölderlin's influence. utterly unintelligible to us. . something which (like.38 This is no accident since at the end of the lectures on Hölderlin's 'The Rhine' (and throughout the Hölderlin lectures of the thirties and forties) Heidegger makes clear that he subscribes to this fundamental Nietzschean distinction. epistemological 'depth' to Being. Heidegger does come to conceive the Dionysian. This combination which 'for everyday thinking is . Notice that Heidegger's world-earth duality looks very like Nietzsche's duality between the 'Apollonian'. in fact. a ruby) 'comes to shine through its darkness' (GA 52. 124). on the other (GA 39. To experience it is to experience the 'dark light' of ecstatic intoxication. the conceptually grasped and articulated. cf. may wonder how it can also be 'fire from heaven'. in the signification it has in 'The Origin'. . 44). 'earth' turns out to be. he says. 128. [Being] that is averted from us. The acute reader. 124). disappears from
36 38
39
To repeat. [conceptually] disconcerting {Beirrendes)' (PLTp. as I put it (in the paragraph before last).39 Later on. unilluminated by us' (PLT p. 'reality' (das 37 Wirkliche). identical with Hölderlin's 'clarity of presentation'-'fire from heaven' duality. 'the side of . . 180) darkness which constitutes the other 'side' of the 'clearing' that is world. by Hölderlin. 149. Earth. Heidegger's world-earth duality is. that which lies beyond conceptual articulation. and the 'Dionysian*. . and 'the fire from heaven' or 'holy pathos'. . I suggest.area of unperceived darkness (PLTp. 55). compare p. . a crude contradiction'. 'that which genuinely is . The only qualification to the acceptance is his insistence that the distinction was discovered earlier and the relationship between the two terms thought more profoundly. It is this region of ineflfability.40
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
disclosive of Being (reality). chapter 2. is exactly how. the. however.
. . See further my Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. one might suggest. See footnote 34 above.37 Earth is the area of 'unfathomable' (PUT p.

. The question that confronts us. 136). since world is but the illuminated 'surface' of an uncharted and unbounded region of epistemological darkness. 'displace[s]' (PLTp. I think. Through the work. Since truth is always concealment. Ordinarily. It becomes expressed. 'divine radiance'. forgets the dark side of the moon. earth 'rises up through (durchragt)Hl world (PLT p. that is to say. to put the point in terms of an elegant paradox from the 1942 Ister lectures. yet poetically man dwells upon this earth' in mind. 55).
. it becomes central to Heidegger's later thinking about dwelling. disrupts. 148ff.) In terms of the moon image. by 'the holy'. truth is essentially a 'mystery' (P p. is: why should we believe this?
40
41
With no doubt Hölderlin's line 'Full of merit. forgetfulness that our realm of beings is just one disclosure of a reality that contains within itself the possibility of infinitely many alternative realms of beings. ordinary' (PLTp. rises up.). as we will see in chapter 4. rather. But the concept it expresses does not. We believe we dwell in 'the immediately surrounding circle of beings'. we forget the mystery of truth.40 'Earth' in the artwork 22. The impoverished. 'the ungraspable'. however. in its incomprehensibility. illuminated disk. 'the Other'.'Earth' in the artwork
41
Heidegger's vocabulary. 42). the ungraspable' and ourselves 'in the face of the ungraspable' (Ister p. (Elsewhere Heidegger calls this 'Seinsvergessenheit' . Hofstadter's 'juts through' is. most centrally. But. 54). 'rises up as self-closing' (PLT p. on the other hand. 54) is always its other 'side'. such forgetfulness since in it. 'The Origin' never explains the connection between dwelling and the idea of the numinously incomprehensible. 'uncanny' (PLT p.forgets the concealment that belongs to unconcealment. . everyday drabness (or scientistic hubris) which supposes our own clearing to be everything that there is . our everyday experience resembles the child's understanding of the moon as a flat. 54). 66). we 'grasp . and. that are 'familiar. of things.the drabness which finds philosophical expression in the idea that all there is to truth is correspondence . since 'untruth' (PLT p. Heidegger offers something like a definition of 'earth': it is 'the ground' 'on which man bases his dwelling' (PLT p. too localized and too violent. reliable. by more directly revealing phrases such as 'the secret'. The artwork. 49).'forgetfulness of [the 'depth' of] Being'. however.

Great art. in terms of this condition.42 if and only if x is grasped in its infinite mystery. 'as holy'. Unlike the Kantian 'appearance' or 'phenomenon'.the reception of the holy as the holy.42
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
Why should we believe that great art. 'Earth'. not a moon 'appearance' or 'representation' behind which the 'moon-in-itself' lurks (as the TV hardware lurks behind
This identification of the holy and the awesome is problematic. as 'awesome'. that x is grasped as holy. is introduced to explain this aspect of the artwork. I suggest (to put it rather formally). in particular. 321-74) is : 'Being withdraws as it reveals itself in what is.'with extraordinary awesomeness' (PLT p. repeated three times in Heidegger's 1946 essay 'The Saying of Anaximander' (GA 5. For what we see when we look up into the night sky is not some entity distinct from the moon. its unintelligibility.) Later on Heidegger makes the same point by saying that. . initiates us into a proper understanding of truth.' This is the idea captured in the moon simile presented in the Rilke essay of the same year. Far from coming forth in splendour. itself which is apprehended when we apprehend world.world comes to salience . pp. world is not something ontologically separate from Being. Truth happens awesomely because world presences as holy. The crucial axiom in Heidegger's thinking is. .is . in the work. that the great artwork does not simply bring world to salience but brings it to salience in 'dignity and splendour'. (Notice that Rilke's description of the wall is not. An important sentence. disrupts our normal forgetfulness of 'earth'? Why should we believe that it is part of the proper reception of great art that through it we grasp our lives as lived in the face of 'the ungraspable'? Heidegger says. is life-affirming. I shall articulate and address the problem in chapter 3 (sections 20-1). Awe and reverence is the receptive-active response which necessarily accompanies . his world comes forth as seedy and disgusting. 'truth happens' . 23. 'great' art.
. The part of the quotation which needs emphasizing in the present context is the statement that it is 'Being . so I suggest. 68). to repeat. for Heidegger as for Nietzsche. This is part of the appropriateness of the moon image.

of a reality which. But whereas the former sees an ice floe . renders it 'awesome'. his beyond-the-horizon-of-our-conceptualunderstanding-ness. Heidegger does not use the former term partly because it is subsumed under his most preferred term 'holy'. People.the latter sees an iceberg44 and in doing so experiences something sublime.) This. 'in itself. one 'facet' (PLT p. quoted by Heidegger at PLT p. on account of a reluctance to identify with anything in the Western tradition of philosophizing about art. 'sublime'. remains infinitely 'withdrawn'. too. reliable.that she has become. says Heidegger. as Heidegger would say. is simply the moon . Similarly that other traditional image of the subime (one of great interest to Heidegger (see. rather. is a compelling analysis of the holy or sublime. pp. On the other hand. world is only one aspect. Antigone or (in the right production) Madam Butterfly are sublime characters because they operate according to principles that are beyond the standards of everyday calculation. The novice and the experienced mariner have the same visual experience. as I would say. using a traditional term from the philosophy of art. (This characterization.then she cannot command awe or even respect. 128. in terms of such standards.) Compare Rilke's image of everyday consciousness as the 'tip of a pyramid'. unintelligible. depth and mystery is what. 26). but partly too. remains something 'exalted and holy' only so long as he preserves 'the mysteriousness of his distance' (QCT p. What we see. I think. since it is a 'plenitude' of such facets (ibid).and nineteenth-century philosophy of art the heart of the sublime is the idea of a magnitude so vast as baffles conceptual comprehension. one who risks and even sacrifices life for the nebulousness of 'people' or 'homeland'. remember. as unintelligible. if one wishes to speak this way. of course. 'closed'. GA 9. for example. If one feels one has plucked out the heart of another's mystery. 'concealed'. 124) of Being. conveniently ignores the traditional dichotomy between the sublime and the beautiful and the side of the tradition that is concerned with the former. ordinary' .such unfathomability. it seems to me. That something possesses .something belonging to Heidegger's realm of 'the familiar.43 (In eighteenth.
43
44
I take 'sublime' to be a synonym for 'awesome'. however. that one has a complete conceptual mastery of what makes her 'tick' . are sublime on account of their mystery. a tradition which. Awesomeness lies in concealment. the warrior.'Earth' in the artwork
43
the TV image) as something completely unknown. present themselves. 'God'. completely 'calculable' . 'holy' or. 309-10)). according to Heidegger.the moon.
. he officially holds to be nothing but 'aesthetics'.possesses itself.

more succinctly: 'we are entirely satisfied by the impression of a work of art only when it leaves behind something we cannot bring down to the distinctness of a concept' (The World as Will and Representation.44
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
Heidegger's claim that 'truth happens awesomely' in great art is corroborated by the way in which art has traditionally been received and thought about. that is concept. Ibid. in somewhat the following manner: (1) world or 'truth' is grasped as holy or awesome by the authentic receivers ('preservers' (PLT pp. pp. tr.
. i. p.45 And still today we speak of 'maestros' and 'divas'. 66-8)) of great art (2) something is grasped as holy or awesome if and only if it is grasped in its infinite unintelligibility. metaphorically.the temple with its statue of the god. someone for whose activity 'no definite rule can be given'. being adequate to it.46 and Schopenhauer says.e. J. or render completely intelligible. and which language. 409). art changed its character. that is. the medium through which the sacred word was spoken. The creator was someone possessed by a muse or as even. that is. Given.was the traditional focus of religious worship. Kant. 1952). C. the cathedral with its altarpiece . consequently. himself. 46 168-9. Meredith (Oxford: Oxford University Press. I believe. Even the sober Kant describes the great artist as a 'genius'. In traditional philosophy of art the awesomeness of the work itself is acknowledged in the recognition of conceptual bafflement as a defining condition of great art. as the illuminated 'side' of that of which the other 'side' is 'earth' and therefore (4) earth presences and 'rises up through' world in the great artwork
45
The Critique of Judgment. The artwork . p. As formal religion declined. can never quite get on level terms with. II. as the 'self-disclosure' of the infinitely 'self-concealing' so (3) world is grasped as holy or awesome if and only if it is grasped in its infinite unintelligibility. (as Hölderlin describes the poet) a 'demigod'. says that great art is art which expresses a content that induce[s] much thought. 210. then. and his analysis of the awesome. the observation that truth happens awesomely in great art. Heidegger reasons. yet without the possibility of any definite thought whatever. for example. Yet awe before both the creator of the work and the work itself remained undiminished.

the hidden part of an iceberg does when the ice floe is apprehended as an iceberg. seen .))? In a word. brings to 'clarity of presentation' the fundamental ethical 'laws' (HE p. Another metaphor later Heidegger sometimes uses to convey the same idea is that of 'transparency'. Experienced as the self-disclosure of an unfathomable 'mystery' it acquires radiance. In Kant's language 'respect' for the 'moral law' is different from. As experienced in and through great art. Nazi Germany. of the clearing's 'clearing' (QCTp. The hidden part. that is. is authority. Stalin's Russia. This
. transparent to 'earth'. 44). recording with detached curiosity the ethical customs of the natives yet with no commitment at all to live by those customs oneself. it becomes translucent. 312) of its culture. as a 'holy' place. it itself presences charismatically. 24. knowledge of that law. and additional to. things 'thing' (PLTpp. This is where 'earth' comes into the picture. is nonetheless. charisma. 108). because it presences as the self-disclosure of the infinitely 'awesome'. The artwork. though not part of visual experience.to be there. Or one might be a visiting anthropologist. one is liable to receive constant and clear reminders of the culture's fundamental values yet at the same time to find oneself deeply alienated from those values. What does the artwork's 'setting forth' of earth add to its 'setting up' of world? What does the idea of the work as the transparent 'happening of truth' add to its conception as the mere happening of truth? Why. for example. In everyday experience world is. as later Heidegger puts it. Because 'world' is transparent to 'earth'. a world invested with 'dignity and splendour'. 'splendour'. in a sense. (a world in which. as one might also say. 177ff. is it important that the work not only brings its world to salience but brings it to salience as a holy world. But clarity alone is not enough . perhaps. Finding oneself in Creon's Thebes. Milosevic's Serbia (even.seenfcinthe mind's eye' . because 'dignity'.'Earth' in the artwork
45
'Rises up through' I take to be a phrase intended to capture what. the world of Rilke's wall). we have seen. he says (following Rilke). numinous. What this discloses is that knowledge of and commitment to a fundamental ethos are two different things.not enough to produce observance of those laws. a 'holy' place. 'opaque' (PLTp. becomes. on the other hand.

algorithms. abide by. In The Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor identifies 'miracle. therefore. p. For Heidegger. a risk. . the art of medieval Christendom can really count as great art.(or pre-)Enlightenment understanding of the character of ultimate ethical authority as essentially charismatic is. 34: my emphasis).constantly threatens to displace truth.) It is what led Heidegger. Difficulties in the account of 'earth' in the artwork 25. 67). become committed to 'restraining] . . mystery and authority' as the 'three powers' by which the church 'holds prisoner' the consciences of its flock 'for their own good'. it does not make sense to ask why one should do what is holy. 195. 'world' in the sense of natural world is.'dissembling' (PLT p. to distinguish genuine holiness from false glamour. The ethical task is. within the truth that is happening in the work' (PLT p. 66). as Heidegger notes (GA 39. but endows its imperatives with absolute authority. The problem is created by the fact that. For while it makes perfect sense for Antigone to ask why and whether she should abide by the laws of Creon's state. of course. for a time. the power of Hitler's charisma being the product of his and Goebbels' pioneering understanding of the manipulative powers of the mass media. however. for doing this. life is essentially a Wagnis. of morality as resting on an 'unesoteric mysticism'. all doing and prizing. and is why. the artwork not only makes clear the 'simple and essential' outlines of what is to be done. 150). for medieval theology. Ister
47
Heidegger's post. a new ethical paradigm. endures. p. Individuals achieve 'the resoluteness intended in Being and Time' (PLT p. in which illusion . and the culture. as Heidegger calls them. 214)). . But. as Kant dreamt. As the Greeks understood and Heidegger emphasizes in the Ister lectures. a view shared by such benign spirits as Vaclav Havel and Iris Murdoch . there is only one 'power' (a term he indeed frequently applies to the great artwork (for example at GA 39. so long as the work retains its power to bring both 'world' and 'earth' to presence. there were rules. One problem connected with Heidegger's introduction of 'earth' into the analysis of the artwork concerns the question of whether. 'the divine destinings' (QCTp. 54) .
. in the Sovereignty of the Good. having recovered himself. The mystery is the authority. to think of Hitler as a new god. knowing and looking .Murdoch speaks. he warns against the worship of false 'idols' and manufactured gods (PLT p. (It is. on the other hand. such is life. dangerous. . as he seems to want to hold. then.47 As 'preserved' throughout the culture.46
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
endows its laws with the unconditional authority characteristic of ethical obligation. It would be nice if. there are not.

God. of corruption and exile. Colours or sounds may be represented in terms of measurable wavelengths. rather. When we respond to the artwork as an artwork. of the stone in the temple. The insistence on God's ineffability by the mystical strand in the Christian tradition (by. however. is said to be a being who belongs 'in heaven'. additionally. We notice the sensuous qualities. for instance.) 26. the stone's weight in terms of numbers. the world 'opened up' by. embraces not just nature but heaven too. Yet the materials of the artwork are 'self-secluding'. sound or weight itself is by no means fully captured in such representations. in the Lord's Prayer. the 'lustre and gleam' (PLT p. Yet that 'world' in this expanded sense should appear as holy requires. on Heidegger's analysis. too. (Perhaps the distinction between God the 'father' and God the 'holy ghost' has something to do with this problem. In equipment. Giotto. It is abnormal for us to be aware of the grain of the hammer's shaft. not a holy place but a place. A more serious problem connected with the presence of 'earth' in the analysis of the artwork concerns the fact that Heidegger does not merely claim that earth presences in the work along with world but seeks. To avoid such heresy God has to be located outside of 'world'. the colours of a Van Gogh.Difficulties in the account of 'earth' in the artwork
47
pp. materials. the shine of its head. items of equipment present themselves functionally (as 'readyto-hand') rather than materially (as 'present-to-hand'). The response to this difficulty has to be that the 'medieval world'. 'disappear into usefulness'. This is a repetition of Being and Time's point that. materials become salient. 30-1. 'shine forth'. however. which lies outside it. yet we know that the colour.
. with what Heidegger calls 'earth'. a locatedness which leads towards the heresy that there is something more awesome than God himself. let us say. in normal use. the sound of the words in a Hölderlin poem. 'earth'. does the fact that in many traditional representations of heaven God is conspicuous by his pictorial absence. within world. in short. hammers and the like. a ground of holiness. one of Heidegger's major sources of inspiration) effectively makes such an identification. And so. presencing only in the golden light with which everything is surrounded. says Heidegger. 42). 103--4). has to be identical. to explain how it does so. Meister Eckhart. 77-8. the faint yet pungent smell of the steel in that head. for example.

'earth'. Heidegger's friend Braque mixed sand and other forms of 'earth' into his pigment so as to. I think.48 In the light of his theory of truth. Sometimes. wood. aware that there is infinitely more to nature. I think. 'formal values'. 46-7). for example. applies not only to a world as a whole but also to the individual beings it contains. In the material. than we can ever make intelligible to ourselves.
. asks us precisely to ignore the stony weight of its stone. And to insist that if it does it cannot count as great art is entirely arbitrary
48
The foregoing is a slightly tidied up version of. heavenward ascent. ethereal stuff.and that one is seeking diversion in order to evade boredom. The effect of eternal solidity could not be achieved in. It can conceal its materials or pretend that they are other than they are. that is. Heidegger is absolutely right to maintain that every material thing possesses an unlimited 'plenitude' of aspects which lie beyond the realm of what is intelligible to us. more generally.) And with regard to films. often even. attention to the elegance of the spatial organization of the frames is usually a sign that the drama has failed to capture our attention . hard to avoid. Yet the high Gothic cathedral. to beings. And a response to the stone in the temple is. A meditation on the 'earthy' may lead us to an experience of. at least two serious mistakes. in its gravity-defying.48
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
Hence in apprehending the artwork we become aware of the inadequacy of all our 'projections' fully to capture the nature of the material. Art can sometimes be in this respect similar to 'equipment'. like the soul. a somewhat confused passage of thinking. such attention is indeed of central importance. that is.that the film has failed as an artwork . to its 'tactile' or. Thefirstis the assumption that in the proper reception of art we always become attentive to the materials in the work. It is also true that a meditation on the materiality of humble things may lead us to experience them in their astonishing mystery. to pretend that. The moon simile. demand a response to the earthiness of our existence. Nonetheless. as Heidegger points out. on the other hand. as it were. in Heidegger's sense. 'earthy' element of the artwork 'earth' stands forth in its 'self-secludingness' (PLTpp. the assumption that such a meditation necessarily belongs to the reception of great art contains. for instance. it is made out of some immaterial. (Hence the ambition to construct a cathedral entirely out of glass in Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda.

In these discussions. In his discussions of Klee. in the jargon of analytic philosophy of language. Cezanne and Japanese No plays. in this passage of thinking. if the salience of 'earth' (the unintelligible) has no intrinsic connection to the salience of 'earth' (the material). 27. according to 'aesthetics'. in fact. If attention to materials is not the explanation of the presence of the 'ungraspable' in the artwork. contains a false presupposition. how mysterious that such wonder can't be fully captured by science. 'transparently'. there remains the problem that Heidegger's line of reasoning looks to be. in the way in which they allow what 'The Origin' calls 'earth' to shine through world and render it numinous. He seems to claim. a spy. as I put it. after all. that: (a) in responding properly to an artwork we are aware of its (e. 'aesthetic attitude'.Difficulties in the account of 'earth' in the artwork
49
* Setting aside this objection. has effectively lapsed into 'aesthetics'. merely.g. no such thing as a general theory as to why art facilitates our grasping our lives as lived 'in the face of the ungraspable'. that is.' The reason for this is that when we do respond to the material values of an artwork what is likely to grab us is nothing to do with conceptual inscrutability but rather sensuous beauty The beautiful is.) And it is actually most implausible to suppose that on those occasions when one does respond to the materials in a work one has running through one's mind the thought: 'What wonderful colour and. therefore. I believe. But this is as fallacious as arguing that in knowing Ortcutt to be in the park one knows a spy to be in park given. (c). that (b) colour is essentially 'self-secluding'. into insisting that the proper response to art requires the adoption of the 'disinterested'. he is interested in
. what is the explanation of such a presence? This question.) colour. For there is. (One is. gosh. that it is true that Ortcutt is. however. an 'intensional fallacy'. This fact alone should be sufficient to reveal the forgettable character of the entire passage. of course. and to conclude that. as we will see in chapter 4. likely to be unaware of this fact. we respond to when we abstract from the instrumental categories of normal experience. Heidegger is intensely interested in the way in which truth happens in these artworks. too. what. in responding properly to an artwork we apprehend the self-secludingness of its materials. And the paradoxical fact of the matter is that Heidegger.

The task. the transparent happening of truth. however. the former. Cezanne and No plays. Great art is communal 28. of course. second. not to solve it {PLTp. the identification of a comprehensive technique for bringing earth to presence. To be a 'great' artwork the work must. and. that the formal feature identified is in each case different. for the right audience. his partial deconstruction of objects. as Heidegger wisely says in the epilogue to 'The Origin' . in the altarpiece it is the gold which allows the numinous to shine 'through' world. In the medieval cathedral stained-glass windows are a powerful metaphor for the transparency of world. This. One further condition remains to be added. The thing to notice about these observations is. represent a theory of the numinous. The great work of art. in
. to repeat Kant's definition. with regard to No plays. 79). 'earth rises up through world'. the co-presence of 'world' and 'earth' in the work in such a way that the latter 'rises up through'. is. is something for which 'no rule can be given' (see p. Great art not only brings 'the mystery' to presence but is itself essentially mysterious.but forgets in the passage under discussion . says Heidegger. with regard to Cezanne. This seems to me to reflect the truth of the matter. becomes visible through. is not yet the completed definition of the artwork. that there is no mention at all of attention to materials. Truth'. in many artworks. so long as it remains tentative and ex post facto.in the sense of plucking out the heart of its mystery .is to see the 'enigma {Rätsel)' of art. But with respect to how it so happens each work must be treated on its own merits.is not. and should never suppose that hints and elucidations. But art theorizing . With regard to Klee. sometimes. There are a thousand and one ways in which. first. be received. we have no idea as to how the effect is achieved. glass engraver's drawing is important. then. And we should not be surprised if. the fact that landscape is conjured to presence by nothing but mime performed on an empty stage. he thinks that his sparse. Art criticism of a technical character. such as Heidegger provides with regard to Klee. happens 'awesomely'.50
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
elucidating the way in which this happens. possible. 44 above). Great art is.

if a work does not find preservers. rejects such a possibility:
Just as a work cannot be without being created so what is created cannot come into being without those who preserve it. not a racial. This is a somewhat startling condition since it leaves no room for the idea of great but unappreciated artworks. in the full sense. 214). 77).) If it is not yet received then it does not yet 'work' . therefore.' Since 'history is the transporting of a people into its appointed task as entrance into that people's endowment' (PLT p. 67).repeating his Hegelian starting-point that great art is the disclosure of truth to 'man's historical existence' . that is. decisively affected as a result.) Yet Heidegger. p. It is clear. this does not at all mean that the work may be a work without preservers. for him. 39) and is at best a potential artwork. 'Whenever [great] art happens'. for Heidegger as being 'preserved'. The paradigmatic role played by temple and cathedral is. There must be those who come under its 'power' (GA 39. if it has 'passed over into the realm of tradition and conservation'.concept. be effective. quite explicitly. 26-7). that 'people' is. very evident. says Heidegger . 'all [their] usual doing and prizing' (PLT p. but rather a cultural . (If it no longer 'works'.it lacks a 'work-being' (PLT p. only when it makes sense to speak of the work being received by an entire culture. Heidegger would have had no difficulty in accepting Turks born and educated in Germany as 'Germans'. presumably. always remains tied to preservers.Great art is communal
51
his own language. However. a 'people'. here. those who 'stand within the openness of beings that happens in the work' (PLT p. like John Cleese's ex-parrot. of course. an artwork. (The 'werk' in 'Kunstwerk9 is etymologically connected to 'wirken'. to 'work' or 'have an effect'. then it is.49 does it count. To be. linguistic . pp. Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime. an ex-artwork. and so on. the work must 'work'. . 66-7)
Heidegger reasons as follows. (In popular mythology.above all. and have their lives. authentic poets starve in garrets. .
. it is almost a defining condition of great works that they are unappreciated in their time: Beethoven's late quartets were considered unplayable by his contemporaries.) Who are the 'preservers'? Not isolated individuals but rather an entire culture. does not at once find them such as respond to the truth happening in the work. (PLT pp. 66).'history either begins or starts over again.
49
In the 'Germania' lectures Heidegger bitterly attacks the racial and biological conceptions of 'people (Volky of racist thinkers such as Rosenberg and Kolbenheyer (GA 39. 'preserved'. Being a [great] work .

allows it to be transparent to 'earth' so as to appear as 'holy' (and hence commanding). it bestrides its epoch as a colossus. But the magnitude he has in mind in connection with art is worldhistorical significance. 'bringing forth'. it might be asked. about the temple at Paestum. not only speaking. These particular buildings and the forms of worship that take place in them are never. that is. Neither are his thoughts about 'the cathedral' confined to thoughts about Bamberg Cathedral. building types repeatedly instantiated throughout their cultures by particular buildings. an 'absolute need' (N I. Greatness. is that when Heidegger speaks of 'the temple' he is not speaking. The great work is great in the way in which 'great men' of history are great. Before us. How. The god or saint venerated as the guardi§m of one city is different from the god or saint venerated in another. particular buildings but are. now. Like them. as he points out (N I. 29. gathers together an entire culture to bear witness to the numinous salience of world which happens in the work. the entire culture. here. first. The artwork creates a people 30. can a single artwork bestride an entire epoch? What it is important to notice. lies the completed definition of the artwork. in the words of the Nietzsche volume. is the work. that the artwork be 'communally' received. 84)? Heidegger's answer (as opposed to the meaning of that answer) is relatively clear:
. p. to recapitulate. is something which. and so binding together. Yet in Greece or Christendom there is enough similarity between the buildings and forms of worship to justify speaking of a single artwork (type) as being repeated throughout. As authentically Greek techne. The next question that needs an answer is: why. brings 'world' out of background inconspicuousness and into the clarity of foreground salience. 84) is a matter of 'magnitude'. important? Why is it something for which we have. local materials and local cultural differences. the requirement. at least. second. p. they respond to local landscape. of course. rather. as I shall put it.52
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
This requirement. and third. reveals a great deal about Heidegger's conception of 'greatness'. exactly. exactly the same. thus understood. The great work. 'The temple' and 'the cathedral' are not.

critical distance from current public opinion . however important. historical context and so on. art] founds the ground of the possibility that man . History means here not a sequence of events of whatever sort. a kind of Prometheanism in 'The Origin': the artwork creates (realizes) a 'people'. Why should this be the case? A people's 'endowment' is.
. in his life. Thus. a projection of herself. allows himself to become a function of the fluctuating fashions of current public opinion ('the One'). history either begins or starts over again.e. at bottom.potential community's50 becoming a living community. its endowment' will thus be the occasion of its becoming an actual people. limitations. Fairly clearly.her talents. there is. 77)
And again:
Poetry [i.and second. actively 'remembers' heritage. In Being and Time 'inauthentic Dasein' is one who. to be resolved by understanding 'people' in the first quotation as 'potential people' and in the second as 'actual' or 'fullyrealized' people. Authentic Dasein. First. . The artwork's 'transporting a [potential] people into . of her 'task'. after all. what 'The Origin' calls its 'simple and essential decisions'. by contrast. the inconsistency is a superficial one. (PLTp.she achieves self-determination . a projection determined by the conjunction of heritage with her own concrete situation . 216)
Formally speaking. p. reasonably clearly. In doing so she achieves two things. a living community. .a thrust enters history. a .The artwork creates a people
53
Whenever art happens . though I have rejected Prometheanism with respect to world.that is. a 'construct' of that culture) himself. these answers are inconsistent since while the second speaks of art as creating a 'people' the first speaks of art as doing something to an already-existent people. in other words can become a people. (GA 39. . whenever there is a beginning . and what I have called its 'fundamental ethos'. History is the transporting of a people into its appointed task (Aufgegebene) as entrance into that people's endowment (Mitgegebene). what section 74 of Being and Time calls its 'heritage' (the words are virtual synonyms). 'forgets' the fundamental values of both his culture and (since he is. however.to change the terminology . into the future. . can become historical. These two features together (in
50
At BT 384 Heidegger identifies 'people' and 'community'.

In Being and Time every society. heritage is appropriated it determines for
This. deeply inauthentic. the reduction of everything to 'resource'). is a very crude and incomplete summary of division II of Being and Time. visibly and unequivocally and by such gathering dispose the world's history and man's sojourn in it' (PLT p. identifies the agent of modernity's 'dissembling' as 'enframing'. In spite of these changes. Its foundational values are preserved in its literature. as we will see. in the collective case. his focus has shifted from the authenticity of individual. remembers its heritage. appropriating. facing rather than evading the fact that one dies alone and soon and possibly at any moment. not itself. in prophetic Judaism. heritage must be once more seen and appropriated. becoming. '(authentically) historical'. When. What liberates one to heritage and from the 'dictatorship of the One' is authentic 'being-towards death'. 91). its heritage . through the artwork. 184). it is no longer 'appropriated' (PLT p. 'the divine in the world of the Greeks. First. its folklore. Thus collective Dasein's authenticity is a matter of. . tfyat is.'entering into its endowment'. not living out its own proper life. to that of collective Dasein. Though its heritage. and knows itself to be. . however. the account of Dasein's becoming authentic .
. Particularly important will be its account . Second. in the preaching of Jesus'.is. To become authentic.typically largely or wholly mythical . For a fuller treatment see HPN chapter 2. exists and is known. its myths and its cultural mood. We must overcome the disguised. to become once more a living community. 'dissembled' version of heritage that governs our current life (later Heidegger. even an inauthentic one. we must re-enter our 'endowment'. in a sense.51 By the time of 'The Origin' two changes have occurred in Heidegger's thinking.of its own origin. first of all. Later Heidegger pictures Western modernity as deeply inauthentic.becoming the 'people' that it potentially is . structurally identical to that given in the individual case. the agent of this is no longer 'being towards death' but rather the artwork.54
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
chapter 2 of HPN I call them 'autonomy' and 'focus') constitute what Being and Time calls 'becoming resolute'. If it pictures itself as having 'fallen' from a golden age in the past then it is. does not 'any longer gather men and things unto [itself] . its actively remembering. of course.

Gesellschaft. individuals become 'authentically bound together' {BT 122). As scholars such as Philippe
52
Hegel maintained that a people only begins to 'make history' when it organizes itself into a political state.
. Through their appropriation of heritage. is. makes a 'people' possible. determined by the manner in which their Dasein. their doing so [being]. each in its own way. society) with the being together of those who 'devote themselves to the same affair in common. . has been taken hold of.52 This is a conclusion already previewed in the discussion of authentic community.. in the language of German social theory. its 'becoming historical'. its 'destiny'. realizes a people. which makes authentic community. therefore. the salient reference here is to Hitler . 62). in section 26 of Being and Time. should this be important? Why should a society's becoming a 'people' be an 'absolute need'? As we saw. to return to the question of the importance of the artwork with which I began this section. As noted. the world-historical situation. The artwork. Being and Time itself has no account of how this shared commitment comes about. This difference reveals the fundamental ground for Heidegger's rejection of Hegel's thesis that the death of art is no cause for regret. But 'The Origin' fills this gap by telling us that it is the artwork which makes shared commitment possible. a common project. the outline 'shape' of its proper future. that is. In the latter case (clearly Gemeinschaft. 'One essential way in which truth establishes itself in the beings it has opened up ..The artwork creates a people
55
the culture. That culture's 'entrance into its endowment' is also its being 'transported' into its 'appointed task'. The realization of genuine community. of. then. is the act that founds a political state' {PLT p. 'authentic being-with-one-another'. fictional Hitler of Heidegger's 1933 dreams (see footnote 12 above). Heidegger makes the same claim save for attributing the key role to the artwork rather than the state. a 'people' {BT 384). Through such commitment a society becomes a living 'people'. then.not the actual Hitler of 1936 but the. But why. It is the artwork. a matter of shared commitment. and so on). community). as it transpired. brings forth authentic community. There Heidegger contrasts the 'being-with-one-another of those who are hired for the same affair' which 'often thrives on mistrust' (clearly an account of. in conjunction with the current situation (its own political and social condition. the members of a culture become united by commitment to a common project. .

26)
Only.out of the night of nihilism and back into its 'historical-spiritual mission'. In the 'Rectoral Address' and other political speeches of 1933-4. eat. (HC p. This. Heidegger says in the temple passage. 39) . In other words. which is to bring about the German people's self-realization. 62) . Why is that important? Because. however.) If. 30).
. In other words. the entire West (IM p. in Heidegger's own words. is that there should come into being a 'concentrated centre' that is a 'site of spiritual legislation' (HC pp. would restore a fallen Germany to authentic community. in the context of a people which has fully realized itself in shared commitment to a clearly articulated 'task' through the appropriation of heritage. specifically the university reformed so as to become 'the will to science as the historical-spiritual mission of the German people' (HCp. Heidegger's 1933 dream was of a National Socialist state which. 'an inner self-collection of the people' (quoted in HPNp. is true community with others possible. it is authentic 'science'. 42).and turned instead to art.56
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
Lacoue-Labarthe have rightly emphasized. that there should be a being which establishes. first of all
True comradeship only arises under the pressure of a great common danger or from the ever-growing commitment to a clearly perceived common task. By 'The Origin' Heidegger has abandoned his faith in science 'science is not an original happening of truth' (PLT p. in short. we can discover why that is important. would bring about its realization through. 37-8). then. it has nothing to do with the effusive abandonment of psychological (seelische) inhibitions by individuals who have agreed to sleep. as a great 'artwork'. we will have discovered why the artwork is important. Not in the face-to-face encounter of soul with soul but only in the side-by-side commitment to a shared project is authentic 'being-with-one-another' possible. 17). in 1936 he demands of art. the centre of legislation is to be the site of a 'spiritual leadership' that will lead the Germans . is all that changes.and through their becoming a 'centre' out of which unfold 'new spiritual energies'. for the Germans as a whole. a clear and compelling knowledge of the 'German essence' (heritage) and hence of its 'historical destiny' (HC p. 36). (Only through the temple. 'does the people first return to itself for the fulfillment of its vocation' (PLTp. as he demanded of the reformed university. Everything he had demanded in 1933 of science. What he demands. and sing under one roof.

53 The artwork preserves a people 31. Its importance does not. Interestingly. 55). 'each in its own way' (BT 122). 18. The artwork. or become once more (history's 'starting over again' (PLTp. Thus the artwork's realization of a people is important because through it and it alone is either integration or meaning possible. . one that is either not yet or no longer a people. Reviewing Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full as. then. p. too. Equally. therefore. GA 39 et passim). to repeat. is simply 'the title of every well-ordered action that is of service to the people' (HC p. 74). or with Anna Karenina and Stendhal with The Red and the Black'. The work 'founds' its world (PLTp. 75. Only this can rescue us from the night of contemporary 'meaninglessness' (GA 39.
. lie merely in the creation or recreation of a people. in the end. because it preserves what it has created.The artwork preserves a people
57
The realization of a people is important. a world which. the American writer Norman Mailer suggests his country's lack of a living heritage to be connected with the lack of a great artwork. however. It is important. 77)) a people. to the 'historically' determined mission of the people. Individual life acquired meaning by and only by the individual's contributing. The word Heidegger uses more than any other to describe the relation between world and work is 'found (stiften)'. says Heidegger. 59). p.
53
New York Review of Books 45/20. 135). by bringing forth its world to clear and commanding salience allows an inauthentic society. it is important as the precondition of meaning. a blockbuster rather than 'the great American novel' it aspires to be. December 1998. . in doing the single great work that would clarify the nation's vision of itself as Tolstoy has done perhaps with War and Peace. however. Meaningful work. Mailer laments the American condition as due to the fact that 'no American writer [has] succeeded . 'has already happened unnoticed in language' (PLTp. In the 1940s Heidegger's paradigm of a society marked by both alienation and meaninglessness is America: he calls it 'ahistorical' (Ister p. to become. because it is the precondition of the obtaining of genuine 'I-thou' relationships.

The artwork. art]. . some of my students. This context is the last line of Hölderlin's 'Remembrance':
But what endures. GA 39. it says. . That which supports and governs beings as a whole must become manifest. Let me note. . But that this remains is 'entrusted to the poet as care and service'. But can the permanent then be founded? Is it not that which has always been present? No. But even this permanent is fugitive. the poets found (Was bleibet aber. .e. pp. however. It also preserves its living existence and with it the 'people' it has brought into being. Even the permanent must be brought to stand {zum stehen gebracht) against the forces that would tear it away {gegen den Fortriss). 61). I think. in which openness [world] takes its stand {Stand) [against 'the forces that would tear it away'] and achieves constancy [Ständigkeit] {PLTp. anarcho-existentialists. is of vital importance because a world 'establishes' itself only if there is 'some being in the open . 'opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in force {in waltenden Verblieb) {PLTp. here. Heidegger's repeated use of 'found' in connection with the work's work has. [Hölderlin says] 'Thus swiftly passes everything heavenly .58
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
This looks like a contradiction. What is founded? The permanent {das Bleibende). stiften die Dichter)
Commenting on this line in 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry' Heidegger says:
This line sheds light on our question as to the essence of poetry [i. en passant. it becomes clear that its central meaning is not 'create' but rather 'preserve'. Poetry is the act of founding the world . Since 'founding' looks to be a thoroughly Promethean notion. how profoundly different the Heidegger-Hölderlin spirit is from that of. measure must be set before that which lacks measure. for example. Cf.'. the simple must be wrested from confusion. This same doubleness of function is made explicit in 'The Origin' itself. here. every reality
I mean. p. The work. 41. .
. when one looks at the context from which 'found' is taken and which establishes the meaning it has for Heidegger. made a major contribution to the Promethean reading of 'The Origin'. it is hard to see how that which has 'already happened' can possibly be founded. 304 and GA 4. . it says. as we might call them. 44).54 For them. certain. In fact. 215-16)
This passage makes clear that the artwork does not merely 'open up' a world. (HE p. . .

then . too. on the other hand. in the best sense of the word. 74). however. Such a drawing . everyday creatures. but sometimes. The only possible way 'to preserve [that]. world. the task being to sweep it away so as to be free to 'create oneself. full momentum is to repeat. 40-1) remains always a threat. the 'world withdrawal and world decay' which..precisely the opposite of the anarcho-existentialist conception . What must the artwork be like not only to wrest us out of 'the realm of the ordinary' but also to keep us there? Heidegger writes that an authentic culture 'can never directly preserve its full momentum'.the worlds of the temple and cathedral disappeared. to bring it 'to stand' against the Heraclitean flux.The artwork preserves a people
59
interpretation is an oppressive power-structure. The Heideggerian spirit is. in other words from heritage. 191). 38) rather than adopting the ossified conservatism which demands that 'the formerly actual may recur' (BT 386) just as it was.is to preserve world. Because we are. It is in line with this demand that Heidegger says that the poet must not only 'remind' the people of their voice. 'interpret' it (HE p. 312). For Heidegger. then alienation and nihilism sets in. to draw once again (wieder-holeri) more deeply than ever from the source' (IM p. Similarly with respect to collective Dasein. constantly threatens to disappear into the multitude of confusing and camouflaging details which are 'average everydayness'. in the end.. presumably.Being and Time's 'repetition' of heritage . when their artworks cease to be able to do this. What is the connection between the artwork and the endurance of its world and people? In Being and Time authenticity is never a once-andfor-all achievement. overtook the worlds of both the temple at Paestum and of Bamberg Cathedral (PLT pp. when it grows 'tired and weary'. a profoundly conservative one.must not. perforce. The task. the on-going and commanding salience of 'world' is precisely what is required for integration and meaning. To remain relevant and compelling in the current context the artwork must constantly reinvent itself . We must 'take a creative view of tradition' (IMp. when our apprehension of it falls into decay and confusion. amount to slavish copying. And also that though Greek tragedy 'originate^] in the saying of the people' it also 'transforms the people's saying so that now every essential word fights the
. heritage. 'Falling' remains a constant threat. When world 'veils and withdraws itself (PLTp. The reason is fundamentally the same as the reason individual Dasein is under constant threat of 'falling'.

and thereby the domination of the pure state of feeling .
.) Clarity and the priority of poetry 32.' (PLT p. to become 'the religion' of the people. . take Heidegger to suggest that it presents a dialectic between new and old values rather than any definite solution to the dilemma. 'the domination of art as music. allows us to see . in contemporary thinking. For what he missed is the fact that a T 'solidly grounded and articulated position in the midst of beings' is 'the
55
56
Values. The idea behind the 'Gesamtkunstwerk'.see p. a religion that would be a 'celebration of the national community' (N I. after all.the tumult and delirium of the senses' (ibid. 88).e. p. my emphasis). 31 above] what is holy and what unholy. With this goal (since it is. is Wagner's subordination of words to music. p. As conceived in 'The Origin'. is valueless' (BW p. rather. but only on account of its divorce. Between such unequal contestants there can be no equality. 34. In the Nietzsche volume Heidegger is sharply critical of the music dramas of Richard Wagner. Some readers. his own) Heidegger has no quarrel at all. is decisively to direct. Greek tragedy 'brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings to radiance' (QCTp. Rather. Not that he criticizes Wagner's goal. total dissolution into sheer feeling'. the great tragedies did not 'refer to' a battle of gods in some archaic past.60
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
battle and puts up for decision [i.of Richard III as the fall of fascism. of the evangelical movement. influenced by Hegel's reading of Greek tragedy. 43). to repeat. what great and what small. For Heidegger. which man does not 'fabricate' but finds himself 'already' in. pp. Its point. rooted in and inseparable from the fundamental structure of 'world'. A final expository remark concerning The Origin'. the work shows what the battle between Olympian (civilized) and Titanic (barbaric) values55 comes to in the current context. to provide us with 'a solidly grounded and articulated position in the midst of beings'(TV I. 228). from facts. art is no more satisfied to merely 'raise the level of debate' than is the Catholic Mass.). collective artwork. not because he thinks there are no values: 'to think against "values" is not to maintain that everything interpreted as "a value" . But this is a mistake. perhaps. Heidegger observes. What he criticizes. Heidegger himself abjures the word 'value'. For fourth-century Greece. or of the Ring cycle as the triumph of socialism over capitalism. Given this presentation of 'the absolute' as 'sheer indeterminacy.56 (One might also think here. 'Wagner's attempt had to fail' ( V I. . was not merely to collect together all the particular arts but also. rather. 87). 85-6). of the vernacular mass and of 'modern dress' productions of Shakespeare and Wagner .

I shall discuss these criticisms in the order presented.. 43) which it is their primary function to house and which give them their meaning.. the organizing principle of. what it calls 'the primal conflict'. that its understanding of what constitutes a work of art is radically incomplete.Heidegger's self-criticisms
61
kind of thing that only great poetry and thought can create' (JVT. in other words. Heidegger's most fundamental paradigm of great art is. For only as the clear articulation of 'truth'. that is). chapter 3 sections 2-5). my appproach to 'The Origin' has largely been an expository one. What this means is that for all the salience of the temple. 'poetry' in the 'narrow' sense must. 88). Now. On the inadequacy of Heidegger's thinking about music.. I want to turn to criticism of a fundamental kind. however. that the essay contains too much. always be supreme in. we would make the same mistake as Wagner were we to fail to subordinate the temple and cathedral to the 'linguistic work[s]' (PLTp. of 'world'.then.
. two stand out as of particular importance: the charge. more specifically.58 Given these remarks. Heidegger asserts this priority of the linguistic by describing 'poesy . That the temple is meaningful depends on a prior understanding of Greek theology (mythology. Hölderlin and Nietzsche. and by such gathering dispose of the world's history and man's sojourn in it' (PLTp. to what later Heidegger himself identifies as seriously wrong-headed in the essay. the artwork. Greek tragedy (see further. more or less gratuitously. first. Heidegger's self-criticisms 33. that the cathedral's cruciform shape is meaningful depends on a prior linguistic grasp of the meaning of the cross.or poetry in the narrow sense' as 'the most primordial (ursprünglichste) form of poetry in the essential sense' (PLT p. create. I would suggest. 74). the second that it contains too little. see chapter 4 section 26. and. second. Among these.
57 58
Great poetry which is also great thought. The first criticism holds. that the essay distorts its theory of truth by adding to it. 91). a 'people'. So far. p. to his self-criticisms. as with Hegel. in short. Heidegger's thinking is too underdeveloped to provide any answer on the subject of why music should be important at all to the artwork.57 Words. can the artwork 'gather men and things unto [itself].

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'The Origin of the Work of Art'

34. In expounding its conception in The Origin', art, I said, is the copresence of 'world' and 'earth', the shining of the latter through the former. In presenting it in this way, however, I deliberately suppressed something to which the essay devotes a great deal of attention: the 'primal conflict (Urstreit)\ According to what Heidegger actually says, the artwork does not simply bring world and earth to presence. It brings them to presence in their 'primal battle' with each other. Hence the character of the work is essentially one of 'agitation' (PET p. 48). It is, I think, possible to see immediately that something has gone wrong. Some works of art, certainly, are agitated. Bearing in mind that, as Vincent Scully59 has emphasized, the Greek temple and the, typically rugged, landscape of the site were considered as a single, artistic whole, it is true that the temple embodies a dynamic tension between the serenely geometric, strongly horizontal, 'rational' lines of the building itself and the jagged, 'irrational', predominantly vertical lines of the site. Heidegger records this kind of contrast in the temple passage: standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging above it and sofirstmakes the storm manifest in its violence. The steadfastness of the work contrasts with the raging of the surf and its own repose brings out the surge of the sea. (PLTp.42) But to suppose that every great artwork is agitated, to suppose, for example, this to be true of Raphael's 'Sixtind (discussed, as we saw (p. 20 above), by Heidegger in the 1950s), is to deny the difference, for example, between the high Renaissance and the mannerist or baroque. In great works of the Renaissance it is true, in Heidegger's language, that 'earth' as well as 'world' comes to presence - that they inspire awe - but, by and large, the two come to presence, not in conflict, but in a serene harmony with each other. The fundamental reason, however, that 'The Origin' is committed to the essential 'agitation' of the artwork lies not in a blinkered aesthetic sensibility but in the way it treats its theory of truth. The duality of world and earth derives, as we have seen, from Heidegger's account of truth as disclosure. Like, however, the Rectoral
The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 2.

Heidegger's self-criticisms

63

Address of 1933 and the Introduction to Metaphysics of 1935, 'The Origin' puts a particular spin on this duality Truth, at the end of the story, does not just 'happen'. It is, rather, 'won' as the outcome of the primal conflict between the competing imperialisms of two primeval 'strivings', 'impulses' (PLT p. 63), 'wills' (PLT p. 62) or 'powers' (IM pp. 149-50). The one, the 'world' impulse, cannot 'tolerate (dulden) anything closed'. The other, the self-secluding 'earth' impulse, strives always to keep everything closed, 'to draw the world back into itself and keep it there' (PLT p. 49). Since it is 'Being [which] lets the openness happen' (PLT p. 61), both impulses, the impulse to 'darkness' and the impulse to 'light', are internal to Being which is itself, therefore, an 'agitated', self-conflicted entity. So far as there is any argument for putting this particular spin on the world-earth duality, it is a fallacious one. Heidegger observes that, given the understanding of truth as aletheia, there exists a 'curious opposition (Gegnerschaft)' (PLT p. 53) between world and earth. 'Opposition' in the sense of contrast, difference, Aus-einandersetzung as Heidegger often puts it, there obviously is. But, of course, the move from opposition in this sense to opposition in the sense of strife - a move Heidegger seems to make - is a mere pun. Difference does not imply disagreement or enmity,60 The main source, however, of the notion of the primal conflict lies not in logical error but in, rather, a kind of late-Romantic Heracliteanism for which the punning on 'opposition' is merely a kind of logical fig-leaf. In the Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger makes his Heraclitean source explicit, by saying that 'the primal conflict' and Heraclitus' 'polemos (strife)' are one and the same thing (IM p. 62). Polemos, says Heidegger, quoting the Heraclitus fragment 53, is 'for all (that is present) the creator that causes to emerge, but (also) for all
60

By the Wege zur Aussprache (GA 13, pp. 15-21) of 1937 Heidegger has clearly seen this. There, too, in the context of a discussion of German-French relations, he speaks of the need for an Auseinandersetzung for each culture to come fully into its 'own' (das Eigene), to be fully and self-consciously itself. But, here, Auseinandersetzung is clearly 'encounter' rather than 'dispute' or 'strife', since he speaks of 'mutual understanding' and 'the courage for the recognition (Anerkennung - i.e., respect) of the own of the other' as the essential condition for this creative, mutually enriching interaction between 'neighbours'. In the Ister lectures of 1942 he sums up the character of this mutually respectful encounter as a 'conjoining in distinction' (Ister p. 54), something quite different from 'The Origin"s battle of the hostile forces.

64

'The Origin of the Work of Art'

the dominant preserver' (IMpp. 61-2). In section 15, above, we concentrated on polemos, considered as Aus-einandersetzung, difference, in its role as world preserver. World exists and survives only so long as 'difference' is preserved. So far as the primal conflict is conceived, however, Heidegger considers polemos as Auseinandersetzung, warfare. Being, the 1936 Heidegger thinks, is essentially warfare between the forces of disclosure and those of concealment internal to a self-conflicted Being. It is not hard to see, I think, that the motif of the primal conflict is really both extraneous to, and a disfigurement of, the important things The Origin' has to say about truth and art. It has no intrinsic connection to the theory of truth, its source being found not there but, one suspects, in the militaristic Sturm und Drang rhetoric popular during the Nazi era. (If the illumination of 'world' has to 'battle' its way into existence, then one can easily be asked to take up arms on behalf of the 'light' and against the forces of 'darkness'.) To see this is to see that the essay stands in need of radical surgery; the excision of the Urstreit. And this is precisely what Heidegger performs in a marginal note of 1960: the idea of the 1936 text that 'the essence of truth is in itself the primal conflict' is to be replaced by the idea that it is the 'Ereignis' (GA 5, p. 42; see, too, p. 1 footnote a and p. 25 footnote a). As we will see, there is a great deal more to Heidegger's notion of Ereignis than its everyday meaning of 'happening'. Yet that meaning is an important part of the Heideggerian meaning. 'Truth', as later Heidegger sees, does not 'battle' its way into existence. It simply - even serenely - 'happens'. Having seen this, Heidegger dismisses the Urstreit from his thinking. After the transition to 'Ereignis-thmking' in 1936-8 (see Introduction section 3 above) it makes no further appearance either in connection with art or with anything else. 35. So much for the first of Heidegger's self-criticisms. The second, and for the purposes of this study, more important, is of a quite different character. During the 1950s, Heidegger discovered the works of Paul Klee, a discovery that will be discussed in detail in chapter 4. The impact of the discovery was so great that he told Otto Pöggeler that it had brought him

39-71.it would have been centrally and crucially inconsistent with the 'first part'. and.
. p. coupled with the fact of the partial. the same reason that the projected second part of Being and Time was never written . have led Heidegger to the conclusion that The Origin' is essentially incomplete? Let us.the medieval altarpiece had that function . recapitulate. Generally small in Cezanne's case. led Heidegger to the idea of writing a 'second part' to The Origin'. 149. Braque. Though painting as such is not excluded from performing a community-gathering role . of course. which is why its citing in The Origin' as an apparent paradigm of great art is such an anomaly. The same point is recorded by Heinrich Petzet: the enormous significance of Klee's art. and. is art which. 1993). to be paradigms of private rather than public. individual rather than communal. a great number of modern artists) is an artist of great importance. their paintings were destined for museums and private homes and seem. for.)
61 62
'Neue Wege mit Heidegger1 in Philosophische Rundschau 29. we have seen. as great art. even. In view of the focal significance of Greek tragedy and the Greek temple in its construction.) Why should Heidegger's realization that Klee (as well as.62 (Of course. 47. a 'great' artist.it is obvious that neither Klee nor Cezanne does so. in fact.Heidegger's self-criticisms
61
65
to see the need to write a 'pendant' to The Origin'. I am about to suggest. p. Rilke. It is immediately obvious that neither Klee nor Cezanne can count. and almost always tiny in Klee's. gathers together an entire culture to witness this charismatic presencing of world (the 'communal' condition). in some sense of the term. in terms of the Greek paradigm. as we will see. Great art. third. is also true of Van Gogh's shoes. once more. brings world out of background inconspicuousness and into the explicitness of foreground clarity (call this the 'truth' condition). since neither satisfy the 'communal' condition. Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. endows it with an aura of 'holiness' (the 'earth' condition). I shall call this conception of art 'the Greek paradigm'. success of the artist's attempt to grasp that significance in his own theoretical writings. (This. art. but only partial. no second part was ever completed. second. therefore. first. Cezanne.

great art is always 'about the relationship between gods and men' (GA 52. dreamlike quality about them. as creative of such works. I think.66
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
Of itself. moons and twittering machines.concerned with us at all. as conceived in the period of 'The Origin'. that is. 72). Though it is true that human-like figures quite frequently appear.certainly not obsessively . makes the smallness of the works of Cezanne and Klee no absolute objection to the thought of their being raised to the status of communal art.that Klee and Cezanne's paintings are potentially great artworks (and their creators. One reason for this is. 312). however. they have a removed. Moreover. in relation to us. places us in the centre of the picture. of itself. about. Greek-paradigm art. does not just disclose beings: it discloses them always. the 'divine destinings' which are our world. Heidegger cannot say this since while (in. Yet in terms of topic. to the 'laws of the signs of the gods' (HE p. I think. seem more like denizens of the unconscious realm of the night than of the daytime world of
. seaweed. children. More precisely. p. In the case of Klee. actually great artists). they appear only inter alia. the following. our relationship to fundamental ethos. 59) is much too grandiose a language in which to talk about Klee. 'popular' art. In fact.as we are about to see him saying of Hölderlin . from. both Heidegger's and my own view) they both satisfy the 'earth' condition. even when beings vaguely like us do appear. The art of the Greek paradigm articulates our 'position in the midst of beings'. a reason to doubt that his art ever could become communal art given that community-gathering art must be accessible. as we will see in chapter 4. The advent of mechanical reproduction that much exercised Heidegger's contemporary. we have seen. (This is. since Heidegger could simply say . this failure to match up to the Greek paradigm does not absolutely necessitate any radical rethinking of the 1936 position. alongside fish. Klee's art does not seem to be particularly . artworks which are 'waiting for preservers' (PLT p. 67) to realize their potential. neither satisfies the 'truth' condition.) Yet it is. intuitively obvious that 'founding the historical existence of a people towards beings as a whole' (GA 39. Walter Benjamin. underwater gardens. that is. there is a degree of difficulty in arguing this point due to the relative obscurity of his ceuvre. the perspective of our 'absolute need' to know how to live. in some sense of the term. p.

With respect to the works that. no temple or cathedral of modernity . Cezanne. Cezanne. that
63
I do not wish to claim that the works of Klee and Cezanne are by any means devoid of ethical effect. Recognizing that nothing in the realm of modern art either satisfies or could satisfy the Greek paradigm . Recall now. of course. just two categories available in terms of which art can be discussed: on the one hand there is the art of the Greek paradigm. then. in the language of Being and Time. not as social beings. to discover the 'simple and essential decisions' one is to live by has a vaguely comical air to it. in Heidegger's thinking of the mid-thirties. on the other. that is.
.Heidegger is thus forced to the conclusion that the entirety of modern art is decadent triviality. not about our. Cezanne's art is not about us. Far from being concerned with the 'dialogue of divine and human destinings'. Recall. 79). the late studies of Mont St Victoire. for example. Concerning Cezanne's failure to satisfy the 'truth'-disclosing condition. but rather (as Cezanne told Mme Cezanne she should sit) like apples. 42). It seems to me plain that while a Homer or Sophocles may be said to open up for his preservers 'the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death. are essentially 'people-less'. But when they do they usually appear. disaster and blessing. as we will see. that in the Nietzsche volume's history of Western art there are just two players: on the one hand. was much exercised by the destruction of natural beauty by the onset of industrialization and may well communicate something of that concern to us. 'art'. as one might look to the mass. nothing resembling such a synoptic vision is to be found in either Klee or Cezanne. scarcely noticing its presence. is sublimely indifferent to human existence. His monumental bathers. with few exceptions. a kind of experience which is 'the element in which art dies' (PLTp. from Heidegger's discussion of 'aesthetics' (sections 4-6 above).Heidegger's self-criticisms
67
action. that there are. 'being-in-the-world' because his works. But for a work to have an ethical effect is by no means the same as having a world-efAos as its content. in particular. that which is aimed at generating titillating 'experience'. natural objects among other natural objects. in a word. generally. On some occasions. can have their significance explained in terms of the Greek paradigm.there is. this is quite literally the case. the situation is even clearer.63 Neither Cezanne nor Klee. most impressed Heidegger. on the other the decadent triviality of 'aesthetics'. endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being' (PLTp. The thought of looking to Klee. people do appear. victory and disgrace. are often virtually indistinguishable from avenues of trees.

the art of Klee and Cezanne. to 'open up a world' to a community as a whole. steps towards the discovery of a middle way between the Scylla of the Greek paradigm. as decadent junk. 'pregnant with future' for that .its articulation of the nature and significance of one. the tyrannical dichotomy between Greece on the one hand and 'pastry cooks' on the other. therefore. neither actually nor potentially. . Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli are not completely representative of the art of modernity. or at least 'valid' (PLT p. . in short. at the very least. a matter for pastry cooks' (IM p. in particular. is a rejection of the tyranny of the Greek paradigm. important and.but. Not a rejection of its thinking . and modern art. the discovery that (as Heidegger might now put it) Andrew Lloyd Webber. art according to which the works which satisfy it are required. necessitated a radical rethinking of 'The Origin'. he would have been forced to condemn Klee. then. type of art is clearly too accurate. he remained stuck in the rigidities of the mid-thirties. and the Charybdis of 'aesthetics' on the other. What Heidegger needs is a paradigm which legitimizes. a pluralization of its position: the development of at least one paradigm of great. that not all modern art is of this character. for further steps along Heidegger's 'path of thinking' about art. 131). in general. on the one side. What is needed.68
'The Origin of the Work of Art'
'for us moderns' art is merely 'what reposes and relaxes . Had. as I put it. rather. very important.
. Hence the need for a 'second part' to 'The Origin'. The discovery. 96).

that is to say. Stefan George. So all modern art is trivial. is art which satisfies the Greek paradigm. 'stands in a definitive relation to the poetry of Hölderlin' (i/Cp. But no artwork of our historical epoch does this. he says. 112). And neither could he ever come to satisfy the paradigm. first published Hölderlin's Pindar translations from the manuscripts. The idea that this byword for hermetic obscurity could ever become the Homer of modernity is an absurd one. More specifically. He records its beginning in the 1957-8 essay. an admiration that had begun during his student days and remained with him until his death.a point of some importance to which I shall return. however. Like every modern poet. but for a small group of initiates . These two books hit us students like an earthquake. 78)
And. is the paradigm of a poet who writes. it is 'aesthetics'. as we will see in this and the following chapter. Hölderlin. Heidegger himself. In the 1966 Spiegel interview. There are no communal readings of Hölderlin.
69
. he acknowledges Hölderlin as the single most important influence on his thinking: 'My thinking'. of course. who had first directed Hellingrath's attention to Hölderlin. Hölderlin fails to satisfy the Greek paradigm. now received decisive inspiration from thosefirsteditions. who was killed in action before Verdun in 1916. Art which is to be taken seriously. 'great' art. as did Rilke. the product of 'pastry cooks'. in his usual way. In 1914 there followed thefirstpublication of Hölderlin's late hymns. Heidegger's official position. not for the community at large.2
Hölderlin: the early texts
1. There is neither a Homer nor a cathedral of modernity. in the mid 1930s. (OWL p. he was possessed by a profound admiration for the early Romantic German poet. we saw in the last chapter. precisely and without gush. The Nature of Language':
In 1910 Norbert von Hellingrath. Concurrent with it. Friedrich Hölderlin. Thus.

the need to break out of the tyranny of the paradigm. But 1934-46 marks. 'great'. the period of his intense engagement. By 1946. as I shall call them. by 'What are Poets for?'. Heidegger was intensely preoccupied with Hölderlin from the mid-1930s to the mid19408. of comprehension being in the process of being forged and reforged. The first concerns what I shall term the 'early Hölderlin texts'. (And actually in more than one instance. since he had long been an admirer of Van Gogh.70
Hölderlin: the early texts
To Heidegger.) o As we are about to see in this and the following chapter. the 'later Hölderlin texts'. to develop a second paradigm that could be satisfied by. he had. already in the 1930s. in two parts. completed his appropriation of Hölderlin. given the intensity of his admiration for Hölderlin together with the unmistakable fact of the poet's failure to match up to the demands of the Greek paradigm. did Heidegger not see. he dismisses it out of hand and without exception. No fewer than four volumes in the Gesamtausgabe are devoted to him. in other words. As we observed. Hölderlin is a poet of the utmost significance.
. is absent from the later. at the very least. tangible in the earlier texts.l
1
Heidegger continued to think and write about Hölderlin until the end of his life. the presence of this admiration in The Origin' brings the contradiction in Heidegger's thinking to the surface. on the other it offers Van Gogh as a paradigm of greatness. The question before us is: why in these discussions did he not see the contradiction in his thinking? Why. But in at least one instance. when he turns his attention to a concrete and particular case. Thereafter the relationship has metamorphosized into a kind of serene identity The sense of struggle. those written during the same period of thought as The Origin' (actually slightly earlier than its final version. in his own way at least. it seems to me. So Heidegger's position in the mid-1930s is self-contradictory. On the one hand the essay demands communal and scorns private art. I believe. those written between 1939 and 1946. self-contradictory in a way that somewhat resembles that of the xenophobe who hates foreigners but has foreign friends. I shall argue. the period of his struggle to comprehend just what it was that the poet meant to him. did he have to wait until the encounter with Klee in the 1950s for the thought of the need for a 'second part' to The Origin' to strike him? The answer to this question comes. When he thinks about modern art in broadly brushed generalizations.) The second concerns. however. Hölderlin? Why. modern art commands his deepest respect.

) Heidegger's breaking out of the tyranny of the Greek paradigm did not occur simply as the result of thinking about Hölderlin. in effect. a work to which. art. too. so. as the result of his deepened grasp of Hölderlin's own poetry and poetic metapoetry .Hölderlin: the early texts
71
The early texts are those to which considerable reference has already been made: the 1934-5 lectures on 'Germania' and The Rhine' (GA 39) and the 1936 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry' (HE). Without being properly alive to the fact that this is what he is doing. I shall argue. though he treats Hölderlin as a poet who is of the utmost importance. 96). With respect to these texts. then. the thought of a second part concerned specifically with the visual arts. Heidegger's breaking through to the idea of a second poetic 'essence' was unoriginal. Understanding. that that importance can never be captured by the Greek paradigm. What I shall suggest. I think. In a deep sense. he treats the work of the 'thinking poet' (GA 52. qua poet and receiver of poetry he had always known. the result of a further and more accurate reading
. Heidegger believes. or at least 'valid' (PLT p. understand the inadequacy of this treatment of Hölderlin's work. however. he does not treat him as being important as a poet. The later texts. it does contain a long examination of Sophocles' Antigone. (The thought of a 'second part' generated by the encounter with Klee was. I shall suggest. They recognize that his importance is essentially that of a poet. 197) as the work of a thinker who happens to express his thoughts in verse but might just as well have done so in prose. It occurred rather. they therefore develop a second paradigm of great. of poetry that permeates a great deal of Hölderlin's work. or rather tasks-. To a certain extent the Introduction to Metaphysics (IM) of 1935 may be included among these texts since. I will argue (a sense which has nothing to do with plagiarism). Hölderlin stands in an essential relationship (see Ister sections 9 and 10).the thinking about the nature and task. a paradigm that allows Heidegger's theorizing to accommodate what. in this chapter. Heidegger actually did write the 'second part' to 'The Origin' already in 1942-3 as a result of the deepening of his encounter with Hölderlin. that Hölderlin is a great poet. is that. Heidegger's admiration for Hölderlin does not initiate an escape from the tyranny of the Greek paradigm because. though it contains no extended discussion of Hölderlin himself. p.

What. GA 39. is given in a line we have already encountered (chapter 1 section 31). see. other things too.and political . the Greek paradigm. the last line of 'Remembrance': 'What endures . of 'earth' (in a different meaning from that which it had in 'The Origin'). Heidegger identifies his relationship to Hölderlin as the 'decisive' one. p. Hölderlin. therefore. unoriginality of his later thinking that. (HE pp. taken directly from Hölderlin. language in which that later thought is couched. though formally speaking that of a poet. 220)
Hölderlin's answer to the question of essence. in a pre-eminent sense. educated him about the nature of poetry and about. educated Heidegger. as Heidegger reads him. . the poet of the poet. 'the essence' of poetry. on account of the. What Hölderlin thinks..as someone whose work. pp. is. 'gods' and 'mortals' is. in a word. does Hölderlin think? As the title 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry' indicates.
. then.' 'Poetry'. One mark of this tremendous debt to Hölderlin is the fact that the distinctive. 214. too. My claim. as we shall see in the next chapter. as Heidegger rephrases it. I want to argue. . is that the early Hölderlin texts treat Hölderlin as a thinker rather than a poet . is. . 294-5. the language of the 'fourfold'. in the Spiegel interview. then. Hölderlin is the poet to be consulted about what makes authentic poetry poetry since
Hölderlin's poetry was borne on by the poetic vocation to write expressly of the essence of poetry. as Heidegger acknowledges (GA 4. the poets found. It is this which constitutes 'the essence' of poetry. Heidegger's deepening understanding of the poet led him out of several disastrous intellectual . and highly poetic. 170). at the deepest level. in other words a 'world'.72
Hölderlin: the early texts
of Hölderlin. It is in acknowledgment of this spiritual education. Uniquely among poets. that which endures' (HE p. first of all. when it comes to content.positions of the mid-1930s and into the serenity (the 'Gelassenheit') of his later thought. indistinguishable from that of the (philosophical) thinker. For us Hölderlin is. 'The Essence of Poetry' 2. 'sky'. he thinks. 'is the act of founding by word . 304). in Heidegger's representation.

poetry is life-directing ('ethical') after the manner established by the Greek paradigm or it is the stuff of pastry cooks. Heidegger quotes Hölderlin as saying. 'The gods'. Heidegger says that the question of essence is crucial since it determines whether or not we are to take poetry 'seriously'. however . he says.. 91) or 'need'. He is not. Sometimes he seems to think of thefiguresof the gods as the way in which a community embodies its sense of the authority of the laws. 34). according to Heidegger.
. that poetry is merely a kind of escapist 'dream' or 'play'. always consistent as to why they are equivalent. 'founds the need (Not)' (GA 39. passim).this is certainly his best and hisfinalview ..) Though the later discussions provide a different account of the character of Hölderlin's thinking to that provided in the earlier. [i. 3 Greek tragedy. his 'destitution' (PLTp. Hölderlin is. 116) content by being the beings they are. 'The gods' and the fundamental ethos of a community Heidegger always thinks of as equivalent. see my 'What is Dwelling? The Homelessness of Modernity and the Worlding of World' in Heidegger. is the age of the 'flight of the gods'. an almost divinely guaranteed goldmine of unalloyed truth. then it would not be something to be taken seriously Either. therefore. pp. Mostly. Modernity. says Heidegger. therefore. Unsurprisingly. 2000). that it is 'ineffectual'.: MIT Press. 38). Should it turn out. is contemporary man's spiritual 'distress'. in every discussion. Sophocles. 150) who give Voice' (GA 4. In this conception the gods are primarily the sanctioners of the laws.) For a fuller discussion of Heidegger's gods. Authenticity. never to question its authenticity. however.can 'man. Heidegger-Hölderlin2 holds. Mass. a time of 'spiritual decline' (IM p. The poet. 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry' is completely taken over by the tyranny of the Greek paradigm. for Heidegger.he thinks of them as exemplars of the laws. 187-203.e. perhaps.] brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings to radiance' (gCTp.the assumption that there is one and only one measure of authenticity in poetry. are the indispensable foundation of authentic community. that is3 . given its . The task is always to discover the gold. p. later Heidegger's 'divinities' are a reappearance of the ethos ('heritage')-embodying 'heroes' (very roughly. The second thing Hölderlin thinks. 'brought the presence of the gods. 294-6).in the visible and charismatic presence of the 'divine destinings'.proximity to 'The Origin'. avoids 'seriousness' through having 'nothing about it of action' (HE pp. think'. Dreyfus (Cambridge. and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L.The absence and arrival of the gods'
73
Notice the definite article here . role models) of Being and Time (BT 385). the rubric 'Hölderlin thinks/says/means' always implies 'I. Heidegger. The absence and arrival of the gods' 3. (In this respect. 'messengers' (PLTp. 169) to their 'unwritten' (Ister p. Only by dwelling 'in the sight of the gods' .
2
At no point in any of Heidegger's Hölderlin discussions does he set any critical distance whatever between himself and the poet (something true of his relationship with no other thinker save. for example.

the insomniacs of modernity. pp.
. Heidegger's early readings of Hölderlin are deeply influenced by his reading of Nietzsche. Like all moods. From this elevated vantage point they are able to survey not only the present but also the past. the 'fundamental mood' of all of his mature poetry. the authentic few who. Most people. the horizon of their life options is confined to the (specious) present. a profound sense of loss or absence.4 This is because . writes Nietzsche in Zarathustra's burlesque on the Sermon on the Mount. 184) of our Greek origin.). 82. p. Authentic poets are. a mourning of the departure of the gods (GA 39. is 'holy mourning (heilige Trauer)'. which establishes the poverty of the present age. this mood is not to be understood as a 'seelische' (psychological) but rather as a 'geistige' (spiritual-intellectual) phenomenon (GA 39. a people' (GA 39. however. belong among those few remaining 'authentic creators' who climb out of the valley of inauthenticity to stand 'on the mountain peaks of time'. are truly alive to the desolation of the present. become. Since individuals only find integration in community and meaning in commitment to communal 'destiny'. as we have already seen. like the 'last man' in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. for they shall drop off. Heidegger emphasizes. 203). 109) Heidegger explicitly invokes Being and Time's account of 'temporality'5 . What makes Hölderlin alive to the spiritual poverty of the present age is 'Andenken' (remembrance). are oblivious to the conditions of their times. Hölderlin's poetry is permeated by a deep sadness. that is to say. the title of one of his major poems but also the heart of all his poetry It is the memory of the Greek 'festival'. 146). as it were. however. sections 7-19. sleep soundly through godless night.74
Hölderlin: the early texts
become historical. 'Forgetting' the past and so unable to 'project' into the future. p. 'nihilism' (IM p.at this point (GA 39. p. stand in the rarefied but clear air of 'authentic temporality' (ibid. on whom he was working 5 simultaneously See HPN chapter 2. The 'Grundstimmung'. Insensible to the decayed condition of the present. Because of this aliveness to the contrast between past and present.they inhabit 'inauthentic temporality'. the memory of the 'richness' (PLTp. Poets. the celebration of the 'betrothal' of men to gods. modernity. in Nietzsche's language. of. is the age of alienation and 'meaninglessness'.
4
'Blessed are those who sleep well. 216). they sleep the sleep of the complaisant. remembering the past. As will be discussed.

that which 'brings the dialogue of the divine and human destinings to radiance' {QCT p. is about society. p. essentially 'creative and productive {schöpferisch-erzeugendf {GA 39. a clear and unmistakable account of our 'task'. It is creative because. no mere nostalgia for a lost paradise. 4. about what it is that renders poetry important. In the language of The Origin'. is about poetry. It makes clear Heidegger's debt . Hölderlin shows us our 'task'. It is not an 'inner' state but rather the way the world as a whole is disclosed. should by no means be confused with idle nostalgia. the focus of 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry'. 146). p. Hölderlin thinks two important thoughts. Holy mourning. the creation of a new artwork which satisfies the Greek paradigm.The absence and arrival of the gods'
75
89). Hölderlin is. in that it is a 'remembering'.6 of the gods that have been. where the gods come to presence. discloses as 'our' task. According to Heidegger. The second. rather. which is outlined by Nietzsche in his On the Uses and Abuses of History. therefore. the focus of the 'Germania' and 'Rhine' lectures. It provides both a diagnosis of the sickness of our age and a prescription of how we are to go about remedying it. 214) Our business is to bring Hölderlin to 'power'. says Heidegger. our world is disclosed. precisely the opposite: not 'ineffectual melancholy' {GA 39.
. literally. p. This is why Hölderlin is important. What Hölderlin discloses. rather.evident in section 74 of Being and Time . or better 'commemorative thinking'. 94). we need now to ask. it is also a projective founding of 'the future historical being of the Germans' {GA 39. then. his work has about it the 'seriousness' of action. as a world permeated by absence. is the restoration of such a work.
6
This is McNeill and Davis' illuminating translation of Andenken (which Heidegger often hyphenates as An-denken. we know. p. about the desolate way we are now and what we are to do about it. Because he is not yet that he must become it. (G^ 39. In Hölderlin.to the idea of history as 'memorializing' aspects of the past in the creation of (roughly) 'role models' for the future. 170) but something. The first. 'thinking-on') in their Ister translation. says Heidegger. It is. are these two thoughts related? The place. 34) is the Greek-paradigm artwork. worthy of 'serious' attention. by recovering for us our 'endowment'. How. not yet the power in the history of our people. No merely academic analysis of Greek poetry. above all.

is originally {ursprünglich) founded by the poet. his aim was nothing less than a rebirth of the West as a whole. As 'the most metaphysical of nations' it is. Hitler. and finally the state-founder.and because of the posited supremacy of the poet (a 'poet king' in place of Plato's 'philosopher king') . But who are the 'we' in question? And just what does 'bringing Hölderlin to power' mean? How. 38-9). p. for a 'self-collection' of the German Volk. grasped and ordered as being. a programme for the rebirth of a properly spiritual Germany. in concrete terms. the 'founder' of our 'truth of beings'.in. more literal and therefore more accessible language . as we have seen. to the primordial realm of the powers of Being' by means of 'new spiritual energies unfolding historically from out of the [German] centre' {IM pp. Hölderlin.which in its essence has already been determined {seinemWesen zu-bestimmten Staat) .by the state-creator {Staatsschöpfer). the practical politician is to put into effect?
.the poet's truth. however. But what. p. the self-collection of the Germans. he says. It is because of this thinker-mediated link between poetry and politics . Through that. 144) It is impossible not to connect these remarks with Heidegger's involvement with Nazism and with Hitler. which means to be formed into a definite {bestimmt) historical truth so that the people is brought to itself as a people. who articulates . The thus disclosed being of beings is.76
Hölderlin: the early texts
Poetry. This happens through the creation of the state . are we to create the new Greek-paradigm artwork? Here Heidegger steps out of his role as Hölderlin interpreter and speaks entirely in his own voice: Hölderlin's fundamental mood. is to happen through the poet. What he is outlining is a plan of action. by the thinker.that Heidegger says that poetry is 'politics in the highest and most authentic sense' {GA 39. thought and politics 5. The beginning of this process. presumably. . the particular task of the Germans to restore 'the history of the West . 214). in concrete terms. . and that [as world-disclosure rather than inner feeling] means the truth of the existence {Dasein) of a people. the thinker. is this 'highest polities'? What is the Hölderlinian programme which. Heidegger. The thus-grasped being is [then] given the last and first seriousness of beings. aided by the thinker. and sofirstopened up. who determines the final details and puts into practical effect poetically disclosed truth. {GA 39.

7 A work can never gather the community as a whole unless it is accessible to the community as a whole. for example. {PLT p. clearly. as for so many thinkers and artists associated with Nazism.'
. But what is the statesman to do with these elucidations? His task. any child can sense what it announces yet inquisitive curiosity can never fathom what it enacts. for Heidegger. a 'Greek renaissance' (see section 8 below). essentially popular art. intended that Hölderlin himself should become the 'poet of the Germans' {GA 39. p. Heidegger's own 'Elucidations of Hölderlin's Poetry' (the title of GA 4). forward-looking 'remembering' of 'our' Grecian origin. few. But Hölderlin is a writer of extraordinary obscurity. So what is the statesman to do? As is his Olympian wont. 142)
The point underlying these remarks is that the art of the Greek paradigm is.Poetry. As Heidegger explicitly recognizes in 1946. therefore. the art of the Greek paradigm. Hölderlin is the paradigm of a poet who can be accessible only to a select. as already observed. The paradigmatic examples of this work of clarification are. it would be entirely
mistaken to believe that Hölderlin's time will come only on that day when 'everyman' will understand his poetry. Heidegger never descends to details. however sublime. highly educated. in a word. Yet the outlines of what he wants are clear. as we have observed. in this sense. Greek-paradigm artwork. If Hölderlin's 'remembering' of Greece is a projection of 'our' future then what. But Hölderlin can never become. It will never arrive in such a misshapen way. 214) in precisely the same sense as that in which Homer or Sophocles was the 'poet of the Greeks'? Are we to envisage the rebirth of the nation through. So the task of the statesman is to sponsor artworks couched in a popular
7
Gertrud Fussenegger {Die Flucht ins Pianino (Graz: Styria. also. 1995). But how and of what kind? Is it. popular. thought and politics
77
The poet's 'founding' is what we have just rehearsed: his 'projective'. nightly broadcasts of readings of Hölderlin's 'hymns' in the newly discovered mass medium of radio? The idea is absurd for. His art is not. is to create a new community-'collecting'. for example. of course. we need is. and never could be. 138—9) on the Catholic mass: 'It is a building which accords with a sublime yet at the same time highly popular aesthetic. The thinker's work is necessary to make him accessible to more than a tiny coterie of literary scholars. pp.

artworks which will gather together the whole community in a reaffirmation of classical values. moreover.78
Hölderlin: the early texts
idiom. or better. The main criticism is the point intimated at the beginning of this chapter. are seriously deficient in a number of more and less obvious ways. But the threefoldness of this structure is actually a fake threefoldness since there is no real distinction between poet and thinker. Hölderlin himself cannot belong among their number. the alliance between Hölderlin. Not poet but thinker 6. The films of Lern Riefenstal . The thinker liberates the poet's meaning into (relatively!) clear and literal prose. Here I want to mention just two. have written in prose. Let me once again stress. therefore. Heidegger's programme for the renewal of the German people. turn out to be indistinguishable from those of Heidegger himself. an (un)holy alliance of 'H's. and something perhaps not completely unlike a Nuremberg rally seem to be examples of the kind of thing Heidegger had in mind. one metaphorical and obscure. however. Hitler and himself. The so-called 'poet' is nothing other than a social thinker who happens to write (somewhat tiresomely. one might think) in elusive and picturesque verse but might just as well. what actually happens in the early texts is the disappearance from them of Hölderlin the poet and his replacement by Hölderlin the thinker. In the 1942 Ister lectures Heidegger satirizes the 'Enlightenment' (positivistic) view of the relationship between 'poeticizing' and thinking as
. insights which are carried over into Heidegger's later thinking.Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. that whoever these 'poets of the Germans' are. the early texts. a revised version of the Wagner-Nietzsche conception of Bayreuth.something like the architectural programme of Albert Speer. 7. in particular . In spite of the manyfineinsights contained in the early Hölderlin texts. Some of these deficiencies are best left for discussion in connection with the later Hölderlin texts in which they emerge in the course of implicit self-criticism. taken as a whole. a thinker whose thoughts. are two thinkers. the other literal and supposedly clear. All we really have. we have seen. is supposed to be led by a triumvirate. that though ostensibly aimed at conveying the tremendous importance of Hölderlin's poetry.

as someone who. {Ister pp. no necessity that the authentic person be a poet.
. quite patently. standing on the 'mountain peaks of time'. a task which. In the 'Germania' lectures.fails. poets of an essentially different kind to himself. understands our past and is hence able to 'project' our future and our task. the elimination of Hölderlin the poet is a necessary result of the attempt to comprehend his significance in terms of the inadequate structures of Being and Time. According to this view. What he fails to report. thinking in general is nothing other than the 'demythologizing' of the myth. not only 'the poet of the poet' but also 'the poet of the Germans' GA 39. But the distinction is actually a fake one. however. All that is left. Hölderlin's importance can never be represented as that of an artist. The ultimately underlying cause of this elimination of the poet. this reduction of Hölderlin to himself. As with 'The Origin"s definition of poetry as any kind of 'projective saying' {PLTp.Not poet but thinker
79
the view that considers philosophical thinking as liberating the mythological poem from the mythical and as recasting its remaining content into the rigid grid and debris of empty concepts. even to notice . leaves 'dry' ground remaining. of course. perhaps. Hölderlin's sole importance is that of the metapoet . 214). is the tyranny of the Greek paradigm. therefore. within the theoretical framework Heidegger imposes on himself. Notice that there is nothing especially poetic about standing on those peaks. Heidegger claims to distinguish two aspects to the poet's work. The only content Heidegger provides for 'poet of the Germans' is the idea that the programme of cultural regeneration he claims to discover in Hölderlin is one 'we' Germans can and should put into effect now. is to represent him as a great thinker.is that it is precisely the view he himself fell into in his own treatment of Hölderlin seven years earlier. Hölderlin is. when complete. p.someone who outlines the poet's task in the present age. To do so is simply to be 'authentic' in the sense established in Being and Time. Since. As though thinking already lay waiting within poeticizing and needed only to be liberated from the 'poetic'. One represents this process as though it were the draining of a marshland. however . and there is. 74). As Heidegger ends up representing him. Hölderlin can never be represented as satisfying what is taken to be the one and only paradigm of significance in art. 111-12)
The Heidegger of 1942 rejects this kernel-and-husk view of poetry absolutely: it 'neither knows what poeticizing is nor does it understand $he essence of thinking' {ibid. he says. a process that. can be accomplished only by other poets.).

Of course. the point being. concrete singularities locked into a vanished past. pp. however. in a word. 10). repressed) heritage are one and the same. are capable of 'return'. eternal archetypes which. my emphasis)? A clue is provided by the fact that. The Olympians. The second criticism of the early texts I wish to make concerns the Greeks. a 'reminding' us of our own authentic 'voice'. properly understood. And this. Hölderlin's 'remembering' of the Greeks' festive celebration of their 'betrothal' to the gods is. ä la Nietzsche. . gods discloses itself in [Hölderlin's] .. any such a return must be in modern dress. 'vergangene' (past) beings. 38): the authentic 'repetition' (Wiederholung) of the past is not the attempt to clone the past in the present. in fact. We must. he says. Heidegger's 1934—5 answer to the question as to why Hölderlin's 'remembering' of the Greek gods is also a projection of 'our' task is thus. that the Greek 'world' or 'heritage' and our own proper (yet forgotten. as we have already seen. nearly always. . as such. 108-9).. to the 'death' of gods. a projection of the future it is our task to bring into being. fundamental mood' (GA 39.. is how Heidegger thinks. Hölderlin's 'remembering' of Greece is.80
Hölderlin: the early texts
Graecocentricism 8. as Heidegger understands it.as if the departed gods of the Greeks were the very same ones as our own true gods. In 'Germania'. p. should we believe this? Why should we believe that Hölderlin's 'commemorative thinking' of the Greek 'gods' is at the same time a disclosure to us of our 'gods'? Why should we believe that 'the absence [of the Greek] and the arrival of [our]. in new ways that make sense in the contemporary context (see further. 146. Heidegger maintains. the ones that will arrive given the proper implementation of the 'Hölderlinian' programme of cultural regeneration. that the old gods must be pictured. to bring it about that 'something which was formerly actual may recur' (BT 386-7). the poet resolves no longer to call out to 'pictures of the gods of the ancient land' (GA 39. in
. chapter 1 section 31 above). of reappropriation. Why. a projection of 'our' future. the divine archetypes instantiated. Heidegger refers not. but rather 'gewesene' (having-been) beings (GA 39. 'take a creative view of tradition' (IM p. a voice which. in the language of 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry'. p. but rather to 'the flight and arrival of the gods of a people' (ibid. my emphasis) . are not.

The exaggerated Graecophilia of the early texts. my emphasis)
Homer was the first to 'found' the Western world. the Greek world did not simply go into decline but rather 'perished' in a way that 'can never be undone' (PLTp.Sophocles no less than Hölderlin . to repeat. 41). 191) . All that remained for subsequent poets to do . 311). (GA 39. an implicit selfcriticism). that was . to represent. somehow.and is . For Western existence this founding of Being was completed by Homer. already in the final version of 'The Origin'. with the rise of Christianity. one might say.that anything not implicit in Greek ethos is. 9. rather. In 1934-5.is really quite extraordinary Yet Heidegger. p. deeply indebted to Greece. that Heidegger's emphatic rejection^ any kind of a 'Greek renaissance' in the later Hölderlin texts. The ethical heritage of the West is. Not.Greece. what Heidegger wanted was. enunciates it quite explicitly:
The poet founds Being. as we have seen.was to refound it. then. 80-1. 124. the unchanging essence of the West. 184. has 'grown dumb and weary' (HE p. but a renaissance. Authentic poetry. is a series of footnotes to . For he recognizes there that. a 'Greek renaissance'. the superficial and vulgar literalism of most of Nazi classicism. the 'inner truth and greatness' (IM p. is. Yet this heritage was profoundly modified by its confluence with
. therefore. the 'simple and essential decisions' of Greek ethos and the simple and essential decisions that establish our own. It is clear that. Ister pp. of course. 199). whom Hölderlin [therefore] calls 'the poet of poets'. inter alia. Heidegger had rejected this extraordinarily static view of Western ethics. his repeated insistence on the 'foreignness'. It disappeared once and for all as it was replaced by the 'new and essential world' of medieval Christendom (PLTp. that captures the inwardness. for example. (It follows. 77). of course. a falling away from the 'greatness' of our 'beginning' (IM p. in ways that make living and relevant sense to their own generation. The Greek gods and our own true gods. are one and the same. the view that our true ethical commitments are the very same as they were in Greece . 136).Graecocentricism
81
the modern epoch. the complete 'otherness' of the Greeks (see.re-presentation of Homer.

Greek^renaissance. political correctness is not. Heidegger claims.an attempt by a power-elite to enforce upon society at large a set of highest values that are different from . fall into a perilous proximity to fascist totalitarianism. The crucial question is whether Heidegger looked for the new national religion to be state-sponsored or state-imposed. Because our ethical tradition is the thus-modified one. and Christ' (PLT p. That Heidegger. through the rebirth of the art of the Greek paradigm. thinker and state-founder'.8 10. in proposing the unholy alliance of Graecocentric 'poet. no 'flight to Christianity'. pp. as we will see in the next chapter. a confluence that eventually found its charismatic articulation in the medieval cathedral. Not only is Heidegger's Graecocentrism (in the form it takes in the early texts) oppressive. 140-1). Hölderlin's socalled 'Western turning (Wendung)\ his supposed turning away from the 'Easternness' of Greece was. 86). I did not sufficiently acknowledge the proximity to fascism of the mid-1930s albeit. Given that the founding of the West was 'completed' by Homer. reveals that his thinking did. is not identity. Heidegger has to explain away the fact that. it also leads to a bad misreading of Hölderlin. like Wagner. so there is nothing necessarily fascist about Heidegger's programme of cultural regeneration. The reason Riefenstal's films.and alien to . what occurred. was that the 'gentle' virtues of Christianity came to take their place alongside the 'hard' (as Nietzsche calls them. 'master') virtues of the ancient world and by so doing profoundly altered the scope and nature of the latter. by identifying the 'united three' whose departure signalled the onset of the world's 'night' as 'Herakles. one from which Heidegger quickly liberated himself. p. Nonetheless it is a weakness in HPN that. Dionysus. in it. for a brief period. Painting the confluence with a broad brush. p.or at least state-sponsored . 220.82
Hölderlin: the early texts
Judaeo-Christian practice and thought. As already remarked.
. for all their cinematic genius. But just as there was nothing fascist about Ludwig of Bavaria's involvement in the Bayreuth project. Heidegger's Graecocentrism is not only arbitrary but also oppressive. in fact.
8
Proximity. but the texts are far too abstract to convict him of favouring the latter over the former. of a new 'national religion' (N I.its own. envisaged a kind of state-imposed . GA 52. it needs to be emphasized. Heidegger looked for the creation. of necessity. a state-funded exercise in 'political correctness' . have an oppressive feel to them is that they are. Hölderlin attributed to Christ a status at least equal to that of the Greek gods. 91). totalitarianism. one might suggest. since 'insofar' as he mentions Christ at all he simply treats him as one of the Greek gods {GA 39.

are far removed from the powerful. Whatever its point may be. What Heidegger needs. but also in 'prophetic Judaism [and] in the preaching of Jesus' (PLTp.
. 150). rather. of the divine in the world of the Greeks'. lustful. it is not to demand that we institute a 'Greek renaissance'. greedy and capricious gods of Greek mythology. in the later Hölderlin texts. What these reflections show is that the attempt to portray Hölderlin's 'remembrance' of Greece as a reminding us of our true gods is a bad mistake. become the 'message'-bringing divinities of 'the fourfold' (PLT p. such a deeper thinking is carried out. In the 1950s. 20). Christianized \hs Greek gods. above all. presupposing as it does Hölderlin's blindness to the profound difference between Greek and Christian ethics. therefore. the virtues of Caritas (GA 4. At the same time. Hölderlin. is extremely unconvincing. the kinds of gods he imagines being celebrated by us in our future 'festival'. is to think in a deeper and more sophisticated way about the character and purpose of Hölderlin's Andenken. surely. p. speaking of that tradition as 'the hidden fullness and wealth of what has been . powerless 'angels'. Hölderlin's Christianized gods are appropriated as his own. in a word. . Traces of Heidegger's discounting of Christianity persist into the 1940s. They are. Hölderlin included Christ in his 'united three' because. . 'messengers' or embodiments of. In the next chapter we will see how. synthesized the Greek and the Christian in such a way that within the 'united three' it is Christ whofinallytakes precedence. however. 184).Graecocentricism
83
This. Hölderlin's own gods. he finally recovers from oppressive Graecocentrism and acknowledges the essential place of Christianity within the Western tradition. often violent. he understood the radical modification that Greek ethics underwent through its encounter with the gentler virtues of Christianity.

Under later texts' I include.. a Freiburg lecture series delivered in the winter semester of 1941-2 (GA 52). .or of. pp. As I mentioned at the beginning of the previous chapter (footnote 1). the period during which.' (PLTpp. I believe. . Poetically Man Dwells . The festival 2. Particularly significant contributions are the 1954 '. Hölderlins Hymn 'The Ister\ delivered in the summer semester of 1942 (GA 53 and Ister). a partial solution. Heidegger's education by Hölderlin was undertaken and completed. 9-32). 152-81).3
Hölderlin: the later texts
1. pp. for that matter. pp.
84
. 43-78). 'Remembrance'.. its introductory pages provide an important summary of the final results of a decade of intense Hölderlin research. 89-142). the underlying structure of the later Hölderlin discussions . a lecture delivered in 1943 also to commemorate the anniversary of Hölderlin's death (GA 4. Heidegger continued to think and write about Hölderlin until the end of his life. Though the lecture is mainly concerned with Rilke rather than Hölderlin.. Though their surface is variegated and complex. in chronological order: the lecture Äs when on holiday . as I put it. of the earlier . Hölderlins Hymn 'Remembrance.'. the period of Heidegger's engagement with Hölderlin. and 'Homecoming'. at least.is relatively simple: the statement of a problem followed by the provision of a solution . I include the firstfiveand a half pages of the 1946 lecture 'What are Poets for?5 (PLT pp. 211-29) and the 1959 'Hölderlin's Earth and Sky' (GA 4. 1934-5 to 1946 remains. pp.. However. a second discussion of that poem in the form of an essay written in 1943 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Hölderlin's death (GA 4.as. 79-151). Finally. first delivered in 1939 (GA 4.

therefore. 3. pp. 80-1). is quite obviously about France and France alone. the fact that. made me more familiar with the authentic essence of the Greeks.Herakles. the 'meeting of gods and men' that occurred in the Greek festival. Heidegger's evidence. way of describing the spiritual poverty of our age.a letter from Hölderlin to his friend Böhlendorf written shortly after the poet's return from France seems compelling. the absence of both community and meaning from our lives. What. too. a description couched in terms of our lack of what Hölderlin calls 'the festival'. 91). consists in our 'destitution' (PUT p. entails the absence of a 'history'-determining ethos and hence. days on which 'the brown women' of the Dordogne walk out on to 'silken ground' (the festive place). and richer.1 What are 'festivals' or 'holidays'? In the first instance. but. their bodies. p. As before. p. the 'default of God'. 64). is different in the later texts is a new. This is worth exploring since it enhances our understanding of the Greek paradigm and of. and the way in which they protected the high-spirited [Dionysian?] genius from the power of the [Apollonian?] element' (GA 52. p. 54). or.
.T h e festival
85
The problem. 91-2). 112-13.have left the world. the fact that our age is a time of 'night' (GA 52. In 'Remembrance' the poet experiences a 'golden dream' (GA 4. in Hölderhn's phrase. 117-19). 'no god any longer gathers men and things unto himself. the cessation of work' (GA 52. of. claims Heidegger. 20. Hölderlin writes: 'The athleticism of the Southern [French] people. Roman] ruins of the antique spirit. says Heidegger. Dionysus and Christ . as before. As before. in Heidegger's elaboration. to change the metaphor. In the modefh
1
Heidegger has been frequently criticized for imposing his own Graecocentric concerns on a poem which. ancient Greece. visibly and unequivocally. it seems. I came to know their nature and their wisdom. pp. GA 52. the way in which they grew in their climate. 91). in the [in fact. 'winter' (GA 4. the fact that Hölderhn's 'united three' . 91). to 'celebrate the holiday (feiern)' means 'setting oneself outside everyday (alltäglich) activity. pp. and by such gathering disposes the world's history and man's sojourn in it' (PLT p. mediated by this. 92). read with impartial eyes. a dream of 'the festival': in the first instance of the festiveness of Southern French 'holidays'. The ultimate object of Hölderhn's 'remembrance' is. the festivals of that other 'Southern' place. that his reading is true to the poet's intention . the fact that 'the gods and the god' have fled (PLT pp. the reason for this is. however. Heidegger's conception of our ultimate 'salvation' contained in the suggestive but vague assertion that 'only a god can save us' (HCp. however.

a caring for. the 'ownness' of things becomes for the first time accessible to us so that 'care' ceases to be mere technological manipulation and becomes.. stress relief2). an essence that is still preserved in the etymological components of the term 'Feier-tag\ day of celebration. holiday. unlike the modern holiday. surely. in everydayness. 'R and R'. intimation of the wonder {Wunder) that around us a world worlds at all. we 'step into the . p. the beings . the festive mood and mode of world-disclosure. for most people. Notice that although the authentic holiday is opposed to 'everydayness'. To step into this festive mood (or mode. according to their 'essences'. mode of disclosure .including human
2
3
Notice that this is just what the charge that modern art is 'aesthetics' amounts to. of necessity. The 'Eigentlichkeif. that there is something rather than nothing. life.
. usefulness'. as we say. . that there are things and we ourselves are in their midst. or better. We celebrate world. 'in the perspective of .). it is not opposed to work. Heidegger makes this point at GA 52. This. Although (to put the point in the manner of Being and Time) the ontic festival is a cessation of work. a preview of Heidegger's later characterization of modernity as the age of 'Gestell': the world-'enframing' epoch defined by the fact that. not.see pp. but rather as they are in themselves. most of the time. That is one aspect of the authentic holiday. says Heidegger. p.86
Hölderlin: the later texts
age this is all there is to the holiday It has become a mere 'break from work {Arbeitspause)" {GA 4. by definition. care becomes for the first time authentic care. p. p. (mere. On the authentic holiday. This. 65). that we ourselves are' {GA 52. here. we may say. the ontological festival. using the language of Being and Time. to step out of the 'everyday' since. 74-5 above) is. says Heidegger. 65. . . the everyday is a matter of drab and 'wearisome' care {GA 52. a fortiori. 64). existence as such. instead. In the festive mode. however. an Arbeitspause. is the original and proper meaning of the term {Sorge).3 The linking of 'everydayness'. Heidegger's critique of modern art could also be expressed as the charge that it has become nothing more than an Arbeitspause. completely fails to capture the proper and original essence of the holiday. 102). 'holy-day'. The second is that from within the festive mode things and people are apprehended. not as they are. 'obedience to a protecting' derived from 'a belonging to the essential in all beings' (ibid. can continue into work which becomes authentic work precisely because it is 'festive'. a holiday from work. to 'the perspective of usefulness' is.

everydayness unmitigated by 'the festival'. Heidegger's anticipation of Gestell in the discussions of 'Remembrance' is important because it reveals it to be simply 'everydayness' raised to epoch-defining status. aspiration and life situation that is uniquely his own but as.as 'Jew'. Animals show up merely as food or as pests. Things and humans are denied the space in which to exist and flourish according to their own natures for the simple reason that those natures are never allowed to appear.abused. 18).as something that impedes the efficient organization of things . feelings. temperament. Hence. 102). I take it. 'time out'. things are simply used and . 184)). 'coming to one's senses' or 'putting things into [their proper] perspective^5 The authentic holiday is redemptive. as 'human resource' (QCTp. a man with a character. a stepping into the exotic or 'sensational'. And the same with non-human nature. one experiences the other not. Or else one experiences him as a negative resource .
. 5 In an illuminating television interview given in the late 1980s. rather.The festival
87
beings . the deliberate inaccessibility of newspapers and television. however. the 'inhabitual'. a day for 'coming to ourselves' (GA 4. self-collection. It is not.usually the same thing . p. and only as. though things may be conserved in the sense of being stored up for future use. As resource. 'customer' or 'worker'. Gestell. 'the opposite':
4
This is Heidegger's analysis of the industrialized genocide that was the Holocaust (see HPN pp. as we say. Rather. 181-8). as we say. were protected from its world-historical take-over.4 'geriatric' or 'foetus'. the then CEO of Club Med explained that the founding concept of the enterprise was the idea that what people need from holidays is not stress relief but. but in the sense of a. not in the sense of becoming self-obsessed or self-indulgent. this discussion makes clear. show up as. The Greeks. simply. trees as either timber or as obstructions to real-estate development. because they possessed the festival.even in Greece. as he is. How so? How do we recover understanding of the 'essence' of things in the festival? The authentic festival is. however. 4. is always an incipient threat . they are never conserved in the sense of being cared for. 'resource'. 'consumer'. In everydayness. a stepping out of all usualness into the 'unusual' or better (to adopt McNeill and Davis' illuminating translation of ungewöhnlich (Ister p. As resource. says Heidegger.in whose midst we find ourselves.

6 In the festive mode. And he also says (with Nietzsche) that Greek tragedy was not 'theatre' in the modern sense. he says. the fact that individuals show up as the beings they are rather than as mere resource does not. is that though dance and play are an essential part of the festival. however. 7 In ordinary German 'Ereignis' means 'event' or 'happening'.88
Hölderlin: the later texts
The inhabitual is the permanently essential. things possess a special 'gleam (Glanz)\ a gleam which comes from 'the lighting and shining of the essential' (GA 52. Heidegger returns to this point in the passage under discussion. The festival. says Heidegger. What has to be remembered. command of us love and respect. p. the coming into salience of 'world'. that is. In the festive mood.
. becomes transparent to 'earth'.) The consequence. able to hold onto each other' (GA 52. 'the Ereignis' (Heidegger's emphasis). (For the kind of unintelligibility that arises from attempting to translate it. then disco dancing but. p. Flamenco or Latin-American. This makes it clear that 'the festival' is nothing other than a more developed description of what 'The Origin' calls 'the artwork'. ('World'. see PLTp. p. rather. 72). as so greeted. We step into wonder and adoration of the things that there are.7 the occasion on which 'gods and men' are 'greeted' by 'the holy' and. simple and oXvnness (Eigene) of beings in virtue of which they stand within the measure (Mass) of their essence and so demand of men that they observe this measure (das Masshalten). 86 above). which renders the term untranslatable by any short phrase. Reflecting on the Greek festival. Heidegger wishes us to connect with it the idea of 'appropriation (aneignen)'. (GA 52. 'being bound into the hidden obedience and rule of beings' (GA pp. but precisely such a festive betrothal (GA 52. have any bearing on action. Heidegger thus in effect emphasizes (Nietzsche's point. 66)
Of course. 66). celebratory narratives of the world to which the dancers belong. but thought through more deeply) that the authentic festival is not the chaos of pure Dionysianism but rather the Dionysian mediated by. and in essential unity with. he says. rather. its coming out of obscurity. as I have put it. out of the 'dissembling' (PLTp. by itself. This is the reason I leave the term untranslated throughout this study. is 'the bridal feast between men and gods' and. As we will see in section 19 below. Not. 54) that belongs
6
Heidegger emphasizes the point that the festive light shines through 'the essential'. into gratitude for the fact that they are and that we are among them. For that which constitutes the festival is: first. however. the Apollonian. things show up as belonging to a sacred order and since they themselves share in this sacredness. 179). on how we behave towards them. p. as such. is that in the festive mode (mood) we stand not just in the 'essence' of things but also in the 'wonder' of the world's worlding (see p. 66-7). 70). they are to be understood not as 'boundless tumult' but as. 'able once again to greet each other and in such greeting.

is a richer description of one and the same 'lack' or 'destitution' that 'The Origin' describes by presenting modernity as the age without an 'artwork'. pp. the living of a clear and coherent life will still require the capacity to abstract from detail to the 'simple and essential'. a new Greekparadigm artwork. Unlike the earlier texts
8
Notice that Heidegger's 1941-2 discussion seems to offer a new account of the way in which everydayness 'dissembles'.The modern poet's exclusion from 'the highest essence of art'
8
89
to everydayness and into its true 'essence' and 'measure' (the 'world' condition of the Greek paradigm). p. 148). 35) of art. the 'break from work' . to build. it seemed (chapter 1 section 19).the essential character of any festival . however as to whether modern poets. The question arises..the gathering together of community within that 'wonder' that happens in the work (the 'communal' condition). and third . 9 The question of how the poet knows the festival to be 'coming'. is 'greeted5 by the holy (the 'earth' condition). in the later no less than the earlier texts. of fulfilling this 'highest. the thinker and state founder. that world's standing forth as a holy and hence authoritative order of things . obvious: to found a new festival. I think these accounts should be seen as complementary rather than conflicting: supposing one to have escaped the reduction of beings to resource. 5. why it is a 'coming' rather than 'hoped for' festival. in general. But by the 'Remembrance' discussion it has become the enframed character of the everyday that is important. As in the earlier texts.tl*e age that retains only its 'withered' (compare PLTp.9 the founding of the future 'settlement (Ausgleich) between men and gods' (GA 4. that the poet's goal is the arrival of the 'coming' festival (GA 4. Thus the description of our age as the age that has forgotten the festival . and Hölderlin in particular.148). And Heidegger indeed says. 105).. as it did in the earlier Hölderlin texts. dissembling is a matter of 'the simple and essential' disappearing in the detail of everyday life. p. 173) husk. second. In 'The Origin'. 87. essence' (QCTp. our 'gods' or 'divine destinings'. The modern poet's exclusion from 'the highest essence of art' 6. Given this analysis the solution seems. with a little help from his friends. the poet's task seems to be to build 'the house into which the gods are to come as guests' (GA 4.
. will be addressed in section 24 below. are capable of achieving such a goal. a new artwork.its fundamental ethical structure.

authoritative. forgotten our 'heritage'. What this reveals is a profound shift between the earlier and later diagnosis of the destitution of modernity. the ground of the 'default of God' is something 'even grimmer' . is the poet's 'reminding' us of our Greek heritage . monotonous and therefore oppressive [claustrophobic] way' (QCTp. it will be remembered (from chapter 2 section 3). or.the fact that. . The 'default {Fehl)' of gods means. In the earlier texts the problem. He cannot 'found the festival' because there exists no appropriate language in which to do so. 184) The absence of the gods is. holy names. concerned the 'world' condition of the Greek paradigm. has become 'extinguished' (PLT pp. 27-8). All we need. in the preaching of Jesus. thus gathered. that 'aether . the later texts
. however. in prophetic Judaism. in which the only culture-wide use of 'Christ' is as an expletive.where this question is never properly articulated . then. our authentic gods. 91-2). any longer.90
Hölderlin. part of which has already been quoted: The default of God and the divinities is absence. is presencing of the divine in the world of the Greeks. 17). (PLTp. 'presence'. everything 'obtrude[s] and accumulates in a dry. the 'divine radiance'. In an age. The problem. that is. charismatic. as resource. therefore. in a word. A clue to the meaning of this is provided by an explanatory remark made in 1950.). pp. the age in which. But absence is not nothing. can only 'sing' (ibid. evidently. was that we have become 'inauthentic'. cannot conjure the sacredness of the sacred by appealing to 'the Christian'. . it is rather precisely the presence. the poet. as Hölderlin puts it.the later texts explicitly confront it and provide an unambiguously negative answer. in which alone gods are gods'. nothing at all
. therefore. which must first be appropriated. the gods of Greece. Translated into talk of 'names' what this means is that though there are plenty of names of gods available to the poet none of them are. one might observe. is any longer 'awesome'. In the later texts. that 'holy names are in default' (GA 4. The poet of modernity. in our culture. the fact that our authentic world has sunk into obscurity. of the hidden fullness and wealth of what has been and what. finding himself thus 'wordless'.followed by the propagation of his 'remembrance' throughout the culture by the machinery of the state. yet a presence that is 'unappropriated'. In the dis-enchanted world of Gestell. None of them.

an escape into a Rausch (ecstasy.
. Hölderhn's metapoetry is to be read as being non-self-referential. no space of the right kind. 7. while outlining the return of the Greek paradigm as Hölderhn's final goal. intoxication) generated by alcohol. p. xiii) for art. satisfies the 'communal' condition. simply (like Niezsche's 'last man') blink before the statue of the god. the media. once inside. Modernity makes.10 In the age of the 'de-divinization' (Entgötterung) (QCTp. As I have said.The modern poet's exclusion from 'the highest essence of art'
91
stands forth. no 'space' (KuTp. 115. however. From the later perspective. as late Heidegger repeatedly says. 193)
10
A further possibility is that within the temple a genuine escape from the everyday occurs. in particular. the problem concerns not the 'world' but rather the 'earth' condition of the Greek paradigm. Hölderlin. this way is an instance of the 'boundless tumult' mentioned in footnote 6 above. the later texts. therefore. p. my emphasis):
Hölderlin has poeticized the essence of the coming poet and encapsulated everything in the single word: 'But what endures. It follows from this that in the age of modernity it is impossible to create a Greek-paradigm artwork since it can never be the case that it finds 'preservers'. Hölderhn's concern is to outline the task of future poets. then all one ends up with is a building which is either empty. Rather than describing himself. the poets found. Nothing. that far from being an authentic illumination of 'the essential' in the Western tradition. This describes what happened in Nazi Germany Notice. as holy and so. 'founds the essence of the coming German poets' (GA 4. or any poet of the present.as envisaged in the early texts . Greek-looking amphitheatre or temple. or else full of tourists who admire the statue 'aesthetically'. of course. therefore. are quite explicit that this 'highest essence' of poetry is something he himself cannot achieve. Heidegger says repeatedly. on account of the fact that we have become insensible to 'earth'. however .' (GA 52. or else full of people herded there by storm-troopers but who. for modern man. the names of the gods fail to do so.one does so in the absence of the 'divine radiance'. to building an opera house. or some other kind of drug. to 'the holy'. in the Amazon rainforest. prevents us building a large. If. 116) of the world there is no more point in building a temple to the gods than there is. As an articulation of the Greek paradigm.

his task is the preliminary one of 'stak[ing] out the site' on which it will. 33) will be a gathering of community in ecstatic affirmation of its own sacred foundations. But what. There is. he is not to be confused with the 'carpenters' who will build it and celebrate 'the festival of dedication {Richtfesty when it is completed. nothing to do with the content of the future festival. is the view that the poet anticipates. Though the poet 'thinks forward' to 'what belongs to the building of the house' 'to which the gods are to come as guests'. pp. as possessing the specificity necessary to a plan of action. given the impossibility of either of-them coming to pass in the present. world-historical epoch? If the 'dream' is not a 'politics in the highest and most authentic sense' for the present. whatever may actually appear as sacred. 151). not blueprint for action. . In the later texts. as 'commemorative' or 'memorializing'. however. 294-6)? The first point to make is that.' In the earlier texts the poet is taken to remember specific 'gods' . Hölderlin's 'remembrance' of Greece is 'multidirectional' {Ister p. then. however. Heidegger focuses on the poet's statement that though he is 'prophetic' he is no 'seer'. lacking the 'seriousness of action' and so. Whatever its content.
. be built (GA 4. as in the earlier texts. it seems to me. 148-9). p.albeit gods who require reinterpretation to make sense in a contemporary context. 114). our 'saving power' (QCTp. seriously' (HE pp. Hölderlin is read as saying. is the point of Hölderlin's 'dream' of a future festival founded by a future poetry. a difference between the earlier and later interpretations of the content of Hölderlin's 'remembering'. a 'thinking back' which. p.see chapter 2 section 8) festival.92
Hölderlin: the later texts
8. whatever divinities are actually worshipped. a 'projecting' into the future of the 'gewesene' (but not 'vergangene9 . but only rather. one day. What this later reading of 'Remembrance' boils down to. Rather. is also a 'thinking forward' (GA 52. 194). Neither is the poet to be confused with the architect who will design the building. . that 'though his dream is divine he dreams no god' (GA 4. a plan for the creation of a 'Greek renaissance'. This was the reason Hölderlin's thought was seen as a 'polities'. its structure. the coming into being of a new Greek-paradigm artwork. must not Heidegger reaffirm 'Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry"s assertion that if poetry is 'like a dream' then it is ineffectual. nothing we need to 'take .

his thought would be too abstract to provide them with the necessary purchase. the projection. and may again become. of its structure alone? What use is this to us! Is it not. on a small and localized scale ('in little things'). In the 1951 'Building Dwelling Thinking' he says that though we cannot make the gods return. such intimations. (If one has no inkling of the glory of the musical life then one cannot experience its absence from the lives of one's children as a lack and hence cannot be motivated to §eek to remedy it. is the point of Hölderlin's 'projection' of the future festival. obviously. though it is beyond our unaided power to create our own salvation. 'untimely' exceptions to the predominantly secular character of the present age. If Hölderlin refuses to anticipate the content of the future festival then.) There is. to repeat. we nonetheless can.The modern poet's exclusion from 'the highest essence of art'
93
Notice that this shift in interpretation is a profound one. . by. provides a measure against which we can remain alive to the 'destitution' of the present. Thinking. p. prevents us falling into the complacent sleep of Nietzsche's last man. And that. As he explains in 'The Question Concerning Technology' of 1955.). Still. 33). the capacity to promote the 'return of the gods' by. cultivating. is important because being alive to our destitution is a precondition of any kind of action directed towards its alleviation. foster the growth of the saving power in its increase' (QCT p. waiting on. however. The high number
. The later texts thus mark a retreat from the link between art and politics. that is. then. Andenken preserves insomnia. as Heidegger himself poses the suspicion. what. 112)? The point. In what might such a cultivation consist? In the acknowledgment and securing of localized appearances of the sacred. 'here and now and in little things . mere 'froth (Schaum)' (GA 4. as we now understand. a point to which I shall return. . even were the 'thinker' and 'state-founder' to wish to discover in him a plan for the cultural regeneration of the West. 9. about what we have been. 150). We have. another way in which Heidegger takes Hölderlin's 'dream' to be important. that is to say. cultivating the 'intimations' of such a return. Heidegger answers. we can care-for (schonen) the coming gods by 'waiting for intimations of their coming' (PUT p. is to provide 'a measure of actuality (das Wirkliche)' (ibid. from the political activism of the early texts.

gives us (in Nietzschean language) a 'signpost' to the proper future of both art and society. meditation on its character of the sort carried out in the essay is the 'indispensable preparation' for its return (PLT p. Unless we have some notion of what would count as such a return. Hölderlin is. as metapoet. we have seen. 78). What are poets for in needy times? The modern paradigm 10. we cannot undertake any kind of action aimed at promoting it. He is important as an authentic thinker.).
. however. as just a philosopher of life and art who happens to possess an unusually pleasing turn of phrase? If we do this then we fall back into the failure of the early texts to accommodate the fact that what is above all important about Hölderlin is that he is. we arrive at the most crucial of all turning points in Heidegger's path of thinking about art . is really the same as that made at the end of 'The Origin' where he says that.and here. many Heideggerian affinities) might be offered as the kind of thing Heidegger has in mind: an acknowledgment of local cults of benign character. and a willingness to celebrate and secure them in institutional and artistic forms. is that one can neither 'wait' nor 'carp' for the return of the gods unless one has some idea of what one is waiting for. Heidegger's point. As 'poet of poets'. by thinking the Greek paradigm. important. a set of conditions under which alone it is to be taken 'seriously'. a poet. though we cannot 'force' great art to happen. The point. or at least 'valid' art. then. no intentional activity can be carried out without the possession. in advance. of some rough 'fore-conception' {Vorgriff) of the intended outcome (BT 150ff. As Being and Time points out. then. I think.what is required is the development of a second paradigm of great.94
Hölderlin: the later texts
of beatifications and canonizations carried out by Pope John-nPaul II (whose thinking has. But surely Hölderlin cannot be presented as just a thinker. it seems to me. according to which he himself is disqualified from counting as a serious poet? To avoid this . as someone alive to the 'destitution' of the present and as someone who. Surely Hölderlin cannot be read as outlining a unique 'essence' of poetry. a paradigm which will allow the possibility of a modern writer counting as a genuine poet. first and foremost. trying to 'foster'.

in other words. We live. are dependent on it: 'The holy is not holy because it is divine (göttlich). 'the holy' (PLTp. Thus the 'grimmest' fact about modernity is not theflightof the gods but rather the ground of both that flight and .grimmest fact of all . Though the art of the Greek paradigm may be 'dead' in modernity. 91) deity: the 'extinction' of the 'divine radiance' (ibid. They. the element 'in which alone the gods are gods' (PLTp. 94). he says. as already noted. however. The holy is prior to the gods in that it is. as opposed to the.the impossibility of their returning during the present age: in Max Weber's word. the West has fragmented into the world of the 'will to power' . is. something 'even grimmer' than the absence of a 'history'-disposing (PLTp. there has to be a way of allowing that art of another 'valid' . 93). is an account of the nature and task of the poets of the present. There is. writing in 1946. Since God is in 'default'.the naked or disguised conflict of rival power constellations. 'peacelessness' and 'mounting confusion' (PLTp. an age of 'destitution' and 'need'.kind is alive. is to be able to answer the metapoetic question Hölderlin himself poses in 'Bread and Wine': 'What are poets for in needy times' (PLTp. ends. 'thriving' times of. in Hölderlin's word. Greece? 11. however. in a time of 'nameless sorrow'. we have seen. and therefore conflicting. 59). p. dis-enchantment. is neither identical with. the gods. 94). The age from which 'the gods' are absent. At the beginning of 'What Are Poets For?'. since there is no shared commitment to a 'clear and unequivocal' Western ethos. for example. 91.
. What we need. as we might call them. 92). no 'eccentric' centre of action (Ister p. but. rather. of. amidst the rubble of the Second World War and beneath the already advancing shadows of the Cold War and the hydrogen bomb. selfaggrandizing.). the 'aether' in which alone gods can find an 'abode' (PLTp. therefore. the conflict of individuals and nations each pursuing their own. holy' (GA 4. the Greek-paradigm artwork is impossible.What are poets for in needy times?
95
Hölderlin outlines the nature and the task of the poets of the future. in their own way. 28). 'disenchantment'. the divinities are divine because they are. consequently. Heidegger emphasizes throughout the later texts. nor dependent on. Heidegger sums up his thinking concerning the 'destitution' of modernity. The holy. What we need now. rather. my emphasis). and in which.

nothing is any longer sacred to us. 'closed off from that which wasfittinglydestined to them' {ibid). on the one hand. as will appear. own essence'. 'In a certain manner'.96
Hölderlin: the later texts
As a culture. presenting it as the distinction between 'clarity of presentation'. bring its 'simple and essential' features out of background inconspicuousness and into foreground salience. If it had been. on the other.they were not yet (in Hegelian language) an 'historical humankind' {Ister p. specifically. . the work would have been of a very different character. in the language of 'The Origin'. it does so only in the concludingfivepages. Though endowed with a powerful openness to the 'fire'. in a certain way. In the language of 'The Origin'. therefore. as it is. says Heidegger. holy . 135). children or the Irish of the ancient stereotype).since gods are. 77) . suffered from an 'excess of fate' {Ister p. For reasons already mentioned. both early11 and late. 135-6). one might add. 130). 130). balance. however (chapter 1 section 21). runs through all the Hölderlin texts. The result was that they lacked control over their own lives. their 'endowment' {PLTp. tagged on as a kind of afterthought and not at all integrated into the body of the text. The archaic Greeks. it appeared to them only in a 'veiled and equivocal manner' {Ister p.
. The result was that though their 'fitting destiny' was indeed already 'assigned to them'. . Unable to turn what was 'natural' to them into a 'nature' {ibid) . lacked. and 'thefirefrom heaven'.unable to 'appropriate'. we have lost our sense of the holy. they were weak in their capacity for 'clarity of presentation'. what the archaic Greeks could not do was 'open up' their world. The Apollonian and the Dionysian 12. to the Greek paradigm as providing an account of the essence of art. or 'holy pathos'.
1[
Though an important discussion of the Apollonian-Dionysian distinction appears in the 'Germania'-'Rhine' lectures (GA 39). and for this reason . their communal life lacked the disciplined and integrated wholeness necessary to constitute them an 'historical people' {Ister pp.we have no living gods. they were 'excluded from the origin of [their] . With individuals driven here and there by the impulse of the moment (like. by definition. as mentioned in chapter 1. Heidegger prefers to mark the distinction in Hölderlin's rather than Nietzsche's language. would not have been committed. This diagnosis is the summation of an extended meditation on Nietzsche's Apollonian-Dionysian distinction which.

are out of balance in precisely the opposite way to the archaic Greeks and so our 'task' is exactly the reverse of theirs (Ister p. divisions and structuring' (ibid). their world (Ister p. to bring the veiled and confusing to the clarity of conceptual articulation. is that the Greeks learnt their art and literature from their neighbours. We have. is to recover the 'fire'. 'we of the West'. articulations so as to gain ever greater control over the world (entry into 'the knowledge economy' as the precondition of ever-ascending 'economic growth'. including ourselves. the ability to 'articulate' their own 'position in the midst of beings as a whole' (N I. But he means. become 'consumed' by our power. here. I take it. however. what to do with our power. from. in particular. too. nothing halts the omnivorous progress of Gestell. p. our primary task is to allow the articulatedness of world to become transparent to . the transformation of everything into resource. 136). Their greatness was that they not only did so but eventually surpassed their teachers in the capacity for articulation. the opposite of the Greeks'. Heidegger says 'we Germans'. frameworks.
. therefore.) By doing so they were able (through the artwork) to bring their world to 'the still radiance of pure lucidity' and so. enclosures. So alienated from the holy 'fire' have we become that we possess no measure of. caught up in a frenzy of forming 'projects. p. to become properly at home in their % Heimat.12 however. 50). ever more powerful.in the language
12
Following Hölderlin. for the first time. Since nothing appears to us as sacred. then. that is. Rather than be consumed by the seeming importance of providing ever finer grained. a frenzy in which we have destroyed our environment and enslaved ourselves (turned everything. (Heidegger's surprisingly contemporary 'out-of-Africa' thesis. Egypt. 136). Our task. 88). into 'resource'). was to learn from their neighbours 'clarity of presentation'. the unquestioned summum bonum of contemporary politics). It is 'to fight the battle of the Greeks but on the opposite front' (GA 39. We. We find ourselves pre-eminently endowed with 'the ability to grasp and delimit' (Ister p. or limit upon.The Apollonian and the Dionysian
97
Their task. ' 125). Writing in the 1930s and 1940s it surely made sense to think of the Germans as the most extreme manifestation of the ills of Western modernity. to 'appropriate' (aneignen) their 'own' (Eigene). of the world into a 'gigantic petrol station' (DT p. 293).

The 'turning of the age'. Though the Greek paradigm remains the 'highest. . I have matched my punctuation and line division to Hölderlin's. 35) of art. bursting into the world from out of ambush at some time or other'. to. [our]selves in the face of the ungraspable' {Ister p.'earth'. impossible. the poets are compelled to travel South.
. one day. . This is why the NorthEast is the auguring of their poetic destiny This is why the North-East is greeted. 80)13 And Heidegger comments that in order to appropriate their 'own' The Germans must be struck by the fire from the heavens. then. 'Remembrance' begins: The Northeast blows The dearest of the winds To me. the transition to a postmodern epoch 'does not'. return only at the 'right time'. retaining. 92) The task. (GA 52. This task provides the narrative theme of most of Hölderlin's major poems. 'take place by some new god. a more preliminary task must be undertaken: the preparation of the possibility of such a return by recovering. In both 'Remembrance' and 'The Ister'. infecting others with the sensibility to experience those. or old one renewed. the production of such works is. essence' (QCTp. to recover the fire so that. Rather than this. when there has been a turn among men in the right place. . GA 4. to 'the source'. all the translations of Hölderlin's verse in this study are my own. (PIT p. for example. if a divine radiance did not first begin to shine in everything that is? The gods who 'were once there'. in the right way. for the poet of 'needy' times is clear. for afieryspirit And a good journey it promises the sailors. that is.98
Hölderlin: the later texts
of T h e Origin' . Though I have made no attempt to capture metre or rhyme. . p.
(Ister p. 136)
13. in the modern age. 19. 136). in Hölderlin's ter13
Although I have consulted existing translations. as Heidegger now puts it/ 'grasp the ungraspable and . would such a god turn on his return if man had notfirstprepared an abode for him? How could there ever be for a god an abode fit for a god. In 'What Are Poets For?' Heidegger makes clear the relevance of recovering the fire to overcoming the 'destitution' of our age. he says. p. Where. he asks. and through the word. their successors will be able to refound the Heimat.

the sacred foundations of community. As Heidegger notes. aura. is to 'consecrate the ground' (GA 4. 93-4. 'the gods' . Heidegger continues.
. allowing it to come to presence.
'In Hölderlin's experience'. p. like the wine-god's holy priests. in a word. p. in their poetry The task of the poet in modernity is. to repeat. rather. The poet's task is to bring to presence that 'aether'. of course surrounds gods but which. Ister p. the holy not in the restricted sense of 'the holy in society' . 193.The Apollonian and the Dionysian
99
minology. can be a 'wonderfully all-present' 'encirclement' (GA 4. The poets of modernity are not. 'traces (Spuren)' of the holy that still remain with us. p. too. / Who fared from land to land in holy night'. as I shall call it. can traces of the fugitive gods remain for godless man. and live to see the completion of. p.but in. is poetry which preserves and communicates 'the Dionysian'. here. of 'earth' and 'sky' in the next section. which validates itself in terms not of the 'Greek' but rather. the wider sense of holiness. the divine destinings. cf. poetry which 'founds the holy'. the 'carpenters' who build. 'But they are. 148) on which alone such a house can be built. 'the house into which the gods are to come as guests'. even in the age of the absence of the gods. then. as we will shortly see. 94). 143)
I shall comment on the introduction. 138. if anywhere. p. that is. GA 52. 49) of other beings. 'Dionysus the wine god' brings 'traces' of holiness 'down to the godless amidst the darkness of the world's night':
for in the vine and its fruit the god of wine grounds the being towards one another of earth and sky as the site [the 'consecrated ground' (GA 4. Hölderlin himself gives this answer to his own metapoetic question:
'and what are poets for in needy times?' Hölderlin shyly puts the answer into the mouth of his poet friend Heinse. (PLTpp. 148)] of the wedding feast of men and gods. rather. 148). that 'holy sway' (PLTp. the 'modern paradigm'. as a matter of definition. Only within this site. It is to scent out that 'aether' in which alone gods can breathe and to communicate it to others by 'founding'. left over from the age of the presence of the gods (PLTp. GA 4. Th£ir task. to 'found the holy' (GA 52. In other language. p. you say. 150) which. whom he addresses in the elegy ['Bread and Wine'].

might be understood to mean simply 'large-scale'. of the latter.as play of a 'lyre'. In 'Homecoming'.100
Hölderlin: the later texts
The epic and the lyric 14. lyric}5 Put in these terms.'play of a string instrument' . The words Heidegger has in mind. as profound. psychological state but rather a mood or mode of disclosure. acknowledged as thefinesttranslator of Hölderlin into English. use 'epic' to mean something like 'tale of a culture's gods and heroes possessing redemptive communal import' and . p. for Heidegger. p. in the quotation at the end of the previous section. then. following Nietzsche. strictly. as Hölderlin calls it. Hölderlin says that his own poetry cannot found a world because of the 'default of holy names'. is not an 'inner'. allow the 'god of wine' to appear in 'earth' and 'sky' and so to 'consecrate' the 'site' on which the wedding feast of gods and men will one day again take place. as he puts it. the lyre. 'work the primary content of which consists in the expression of profound feeling or emotion': feeling or emotion. 'Epic'. that is. And the 'string instrument' to which these words are sung is. the poet who is concerned not with 'history' but typically. comments Heidegger. for example. above all. 'Lyric' and 'epic' can. Actually. 27). a Grundstimmung. nature words. 1961). I. however. as he does. a 'string instrument'. as noted earlier (section 6 above). certain 'holy words' (ibid. something. actually translates Hölderlin's 'SaitenspieP . edited and with plain prose translations by Michael Hamburger (Harmondsworth: Penguin. therefore. the words which.again following section 5 of The Birth of Tragedy .
. 'sung' rather than said. In spite.'lyric' to mean. with nature. a translation for which. 11)). be defined in different ways. I suggest. I believe. p. which. therefore. 134). there is no justification. Hölderlin's poetry is. though he lacks 'holy names' the poet cannot be completely 'wordless' since otherwise he could not have succeeded. are. or to the accompaniment of.14 In other language. we may say that while the epic is. or course.). I can only think that Hamburger is moved by precisely the kinds of considerations outlined in this section (see Hölderlin. This gives us a new way of describing the difference between the Greek and modern paradigms: the poetry of the former is epic poetry. roughly. the lyric is the art of today
14
15
Michael Hamburger. sung on. (It is a 'SaitenspieF (GA 4. in a certain sense 'wordless'. nonetheless. in 'saying the holy' (GA 4. rather. of the absence of 'holy names' Hölderlin possesses. the art of yesterday and tomorrow. the poet who 'founds the holy' is the lyric poet.

And heaven's gladdening showers Drip from the vine. at break of day. and the cloud. finally. and gleaming In peaceful sunlight stands the grove of trees So they [the poets of modernity] stand under propitious weather They whom no master alone.his distinctions between 'needy' and thriving times and the difference in the poetic task appropriate to each . by attending to Hölderlin's distinction between the present. attention. as well as announcing. to his readings of Äs when on holiday' and 'Homecoming/to the Relatives'. does Heidegger see this. to view the fields Forth goes a farmer. educates (erzieht) in a light encirclement The mighty one. Poeticizing joyfully. When all through the sultry night cooling flashes Have fallen and the thunder still rumbles afar And back into its channel the stream retreats And newly grows the grass. What we have seen so far is that Heidegger. Hither.breaks free of the tyranny of the Greek paradigm. whom the wonderfully All-present. 49) And 'Homecoming' begins: In there. yonder the skittish mountain-wind roars and tumbles
. p. in the Alps. in particular. does he. 'poet for needy times'? And if he is. (GA 4. covers the yawning valley within. and so. discovers a new paradigm which gives him a theoretical position that allows him to do something other than pretend that the whole of modern art is the lightly entertaining product of'pastry cooks'. divinely beautiful nature. it is still bright night. acknowledge him as a writer as well as philosopher of poetry? Only the briefest attention to Heidegger's reading of the poems which he chooses to make the focus of his later attention is needed to establish that the answer to both these questions is an affirmative one. 'Holiday' (as I shall abbreviate its title) begins as follows:
As when on holiday. and the past and future on the other . read him as satisfying. on the one hand. in the later texts. the modern paradigm. But does Hölderlin merely articulate the modern paradigm or does he also satisfy it? Is Hölderlin himself a.Is Hölderlin a poet for 'needy times'?
101
Is Hölderlin a poet for 'needy times'? 15.

rather. Young in appearance. Slowly it hurries and wars. And Heidegger is fully alive to this. charged with the mission of refounding the holy. p. p. is that the holy must contain 'all fullness and every structure in itself {GA 4. p. but as. It follows. is to be understood not as the particular human being. that 'chaos' must be read epistemologically rather than ontologically: the holy cannot be intrinsically chaotic. in Heidegger's language. 49). 76-7)
Poetry and prose 16. (GA 4. They are. rather. he says that they are not to be understood as hymns in the usual sense of being written to or about the holy. says Heidegger. yet strong. ungraspable in terms of our standards of intelligibility 'Hymns of the holy'. 'holy chaos' (GA 4. pp. are poems of intense lyricism. the holy itself.17 The speaker in the poems. this joy-trembling chaos. The truth. Commenting on the fact that Hölderlin called his late poems 'hymns'. these. seethes and reels in its eternal bounds. being itself 'thefirmlaw in which all beings and relations are arranged' {GA 4. The word is the Ereignis of the holy. was 'once created out of holy chaos' {GA 4. it celebrates loving conflict Amidst the rocks. evidently. poems which. pp. poems which satisfy the modern paradigm. Research in Phenomenology 7. rather. of course. 1977. joy-filled 'chaos'. So they are. 'found the holy'.
. I owe this way of putting Heidegger's point to Andre Schuwer's sensitive 'Nature and the Holy: On Heidegger's Interpretation of Hölderlin's Hymn "Wie wenn am Feiertage"'. which operates 'according tofixedlaws'.
The holy gifts (verschenkt) the word and comes itself into the word. 9)
Though metapoetic concerns are manifest. 'hymns of the holy' where this is to be understood as a subjective rather than objective genitive. (GA 4. 49)16 come to presence. p. 225-37. 63). that is. resembles 'tales of Mary' parsed as 'tales told by Mary' rather than as 'tales about Mary'. in other words. Heidegger points out that Hölderlin's 'all-creating' holiness cannot be 'chaos' in the sense of 'wildness and confusion' since that could 'provide no footing for [the] distinctions' actually present in the visible world. of re-enchanting the dis-enchanted age?
16
17
Hölderlin writes in 'Holiday' that visible nature. Elaborating on this paradoxical conjunction. In Hölderlin's hymns. For more bacchantically rises the morning within. poems in which 'the wonderfully all-present'. Heidegger in effect points out. Hölderlin. p. It is merely by our lights 'chaotic'. particularly in the passage from 'Holiday'. One question concerning the modern paradigm remains outstanding: why is it the poet who is 'the wine god's holy priest'.102
Hölderlin: the later texts Sheer through the firs a shaft of light gleams and is lost. 73).

The later Hölderlin texts. If we are to use 'vieldeutig' to understand the essence of poetry we must. is. is 'vieldeutig'. is. 'unambiguous'. says Heidegger. The poetic 'name'. and prose on the other. 15). decompose the term into its literal meaning: 'of many meanings'. 'eindeutig'. the poetic word has no 'definition' (GA 52. information-transference is not the point of poetry (which is not the same as saying that poetry lacks 'cognitive import'). p. an ideal which is increasingly being realized in practice and which reaches its culmination in the one-to-one correspondence between words and concepts that occurs in the artificial language of 'cybernetic representation' (D p. 15. 142). possessed of a 'multiplicity' or 'richness of meaning'.with the difference between poetry. from which it follows that. p. Kant's. unparaphrasable. pejorative meaning: 'ambiguous'. or at least aspires to be. A major failing of both the early Hölderlin texts and 'The Origin' is that the question of the nature of this difference is never explicitly confronted. unlike the word of (at least ideal) information exchange. see. suggesting that Heidegger's understanding of the phenomenon is different from. 17. more than can ever be captured in words. on the one hand. It communicates. to use a familiar word from the philosophy of art. 74). 64. Poetry is injudiciously defined as just any kind of 'projective saying' (PLT p. and in particular the 1941 discussion of 'Remembrance' (GA 52). 192). If we were interested only in information transference we might understand this expression in terms of its everyday.18
18
Though the word is familiar the connection between poetry and the holy is less so. language used as a tool for information exchange (GA 52. The
. which makes any future-prescribing thinker as much of a poet as Hölderlin. 159). however. Ordinary language. remedy this deficiency by explicitly confronting the question of the special relationship between the holy and the poetic word. too.Poetry and prose
103
Why is it uniquely he who possesses 'holy words' (see section 14 above)? Why not the 'thinker' or even 'state-founder'? The answer to this question must have to do with language . on the other hand. The ordinary 'name' is. 'computer information language' (D p. For to every 'genuinely' poetic word belongs an 'inexhaustible' range of 'complex spaces of [semantic] vibration (vielfältige Schwingungsräume)'. Evidently. means. say. says Heidegger. OWL pp.

's. the following. transparent to Being. the unfathomability. belonging to indefinitely many 'spaces'. as later Heidegger puts it. They are all 'worldly' resonances. . In eindeutig world experience the richness of many-faceted (PLTp. Though. a deportment. that transcend our ultimate horizon of intelligibility. ceases to be a mere being. for example. the only possible horizon.) difference is. What is important here are the '. 199-200). a character. by the one-dimensionality of a horizon of disclosure that is taken to be the only horizon there is. a summer's day. Kant. . as it were. thinks of the poetic word as. then beings start. one might say. to. numinous.) Poetic language. 194) we are brought to experience the world poetically. rather. while thinking of the poetic word (or 'aesthetic idea'. Heidegger calls this drabness 'metaphysics'. Trakl's poem is an absolute 'clarity of presentation' (see section 12 above) . the 'secret' life that belongs to every being. Read in Heidegger's way. In poetic naming. when. under the power of Hölderlin's 'Remembrance' or of Trakl's 'A Winter Evening' Window with falling snow is arrayed Long tolls the vesper bell. Beings which. Heidegger. we experience the 'self-secluding' in things. by contrast. the holy. in poetry. the infinitude. In its naming the holy shows itself. When poetry 'works'.104
Hölderlin: the later texts
Eindeutig language is the language of drab everydayness. thinks of all those resonances as occurring within an ultimate ('transcendental') horizon of intelligibility. the 'horizon of all our horizons'. to 'thing' (PLT pp. become.its 'names' nonetheless 'vibrate' with the richness of meaning that is their inexhaustible range of poetic spaces. opens up. like all good poetry. I suggest.
. that is. . It acquires an aura. . in the eindeutig representations of everydayness are 'opaque' (PLT p. through the transparency of its presence. 180) 'richness'. for example. To name one's true love poetically. 'house' or 'table' . 124) Being is shut out by the cage of language. (As we will see in the next chapter. 108). . they indicate not only that her 'worldly' qualities are uncountable. The house is provided well The table is for many laid . but also that the range of those qualities extends beyond what either we or the poet can grasp. on the other hand. (PLTp.. The being. as he calls it) as resonating indefinitely. is to name a face. therefore. in addition to resonating in the way Kant recognizes. This is the reason why poets. are vibrant with the holy itself. as I put it. bringing additionally to presence the sense of its designata as possessing indefinitely many 'facets'. but becomes. to ring with its 'inexhaustible' and 'unfathomable' (PLT p. a blessing a . allows us to sense the infinitude of its depth..there is no ambiguity about 'bell'. a rose. to sing the song of Being. and
footnote 18 (cont.

82-3. the way 'beings as a whole' are disclosed. 52). we have found two connected contrasts between the early and later Hölderlin texts. he discovers the modern paradigm and through it escapes from the tyranny of the Greek.The Ereignis
105
po&ts alone. From this it follows that to be in the Grundstimmung of cosmic gratitude is to experience the world as a whole as full of the presence of. to inhabit the mood of cosmic gratitude. 'bring the enigma as enigma close . the Grundstimmung of the poetry and of its proper reception is. 197). see chapter 2 section 3) are not 'inner feelings' tacked on to cognitive experience as causal byproducts. the 'wonderfully all-present' (see p. for the first time. 35). And. in Hölderlin's words. two aspects to his Hölderlinian 'education'. of necessity. even in the face of the absence of the gods. rather. According to the early texts. as
. to 'give thanks' for the 'gift' of such a world and for one's own existence in it. The Ereignis 18.modern paradigm. above all. allow us to 'grasp the ungraspable' and ourselves 'in the face of the ungraspable' (Ister p. Moods. First. he ceases to treat Hölderlin's significance as indistinguishable from that of the authentic. Only the possessors of poetic language can name the unnamable. two transitions in Heidegger's thinking. If Hölderlin discloses the world as a holy place. philosophical thinker and properly recognizes. second. then it follows that. simultaneously and inseparably connected with this. one of 'thankfulness'. it is 'gratitude' or 'thankfulness' (das Danken) (GA 52. 101 above and GA 4. A third contrast consists in a striking transformation in Heidegger's understanding of the fundamental character of Hölderlin's poetry itself. the 'fundamental mood' of all of Hölderlin's mature verse is 'holy mourning' (chapter 2 section 3). his greatness as. pp. According to the later texts. They are. to us' (Ister p. the greatness of &poet. To experience one's world as a holy place is. as a matter of conceptual necessity. 136). So far. possess 'holy words'. This is a clear and immediate consequence of Heidegger's coming to read Hölderlin in terms of the . p. . as we have seen Heidegger emphasizing from his earliest discussions of the Grundstimmung (GA 39. however. it will be remembered. . through the later texts' expanded and deepened reading of the poet. p.

then. 'being'. p. Ereignis is. however. therefore. in a section entitled 'Das Ereignis'. is not something independent of human beings. what it means in ordinary German. rather. The 'Event' appropriates us. human practices or 'forms of life' (see chapter 1 section 18) and is. 'the clearing'. 91). It is. otherwise one ends up with an absurd kind of idealism. In short. transparent to 'earth'. 'the being of beings'. for example. When we are aware of this appropriation we have an Ereignis 'experience' (GA 65. Ereignis means 'event of appropriation' {BT p. But this is only part. experiencing the holiness of world and cosmic gratitude are not merely connected. therefore. What. the ancient world is replaced by the 'new and essential' world of medieval Christianity. to experience the world as a holy place.19 Because it is thus dependent. in. 'presence' or 'presencing' (P p. 70). for him. It is. for Heidegger. something that 'happens' in 'language'. a turn to iEreignis-thinkmg\ 'Ereignis' is. and happens again and again as human practices undergo historical change .as. the less essential part. 302). Heidegger says that when the 'lighting-concealing' that is truth is 'experience^] as Ereignis (appropriation)' it happens as 'transport and enchant19
Of course Being (reality) . It is.106
Hölderlin: the later texts
sparkling with the 'divine radiance' {PLT p. therefore. Heidegger identifies a second 'turn' in his thinking as occurring in the Contributions to Philosophy of 1936-8. the happening of. the happening of world. 310). in other words. 19). as he variously calls it 'truth'. in other words. They are one and the same phenomenon. In calling being or world a 'happening' Heidegger makes the point that intelligibility.firstof all. the fundamental structure in terms of which beings show up as the beings they are. What is 'appropriation' and what is it to experience it? In the Contributions to Philosophy. As mentioned in section 3 of the introduction.cannot be thus dependent.
. the happening of that ultimate horizon of disclosure which defines the 'world' of an historical culture. Heidegger indicates this by saying that. the central concept in his post-1938 thinking. being 'happens'. in the language of 'The Origin'. does this mysterious word mean? It means. 'event' or 'happening'. as. dependent on human beings (P p. of the concept. that is. 19. Ereignis is.see section 4 of the introduction .

He discovers it because. that embraces all the aspects of Hölderlin's education of Heidegger is to say that it is in and through Hölderlin's self-reflective lyricism that Heidegger discovers both the concept and the experience of 'the Ereignis'. to repeat. therefore. pp. p. that there is something rather than nothing. appropriated by. it follows that the JSragms-experience and the world-disclosing mood of cosmic gratitude are one and the same.its radiant 'worlding'.
20
If this is right then it follows that the 'Contributions to Philosophy' . is that to share in the poet's 'epiphany' (ibid. as Heidegger puts it.). for unclear reasons. What I suggest.The Ereignis
107
ment (Entrückung und Berückungf (GA 65. that there are things and we ourselves are in their midst' (see p. 70). 'the Ereignis of the holy' (GA 4. that is. between the apprehension of the Hölderlinian Grundstimmung as 'holy mourning' and its apprehension as cosmic gratitude.often described. the experience of the world as the Ereignis of the holy. Properly experienced. In 'Holiday' he uses exactly the same words. the Ereignis is. it is important to note. is that the turn of 1936-8 and the transformation in Heidegger's understanding of Hölderlin are one and the same process. What follows. Though it precedes them in the order of writing. as later Heidegger most often puts it (for example at PLTp.20 The transformation. as 'Heidegger's second-greatest work' . his ecstatic experience of the holiness of the world (in other words the festive mood that celebrates 'the wonder that around us a world worlds. then. Heidegger says. I suggest. is no mere transformation in Heidegger's interpretation of Hölderlin. The time of this turn. p.
. Given the identity of voices throughout the Hölderlin discussions. my emphasis). precedes it in the order of thinking. Since the experiencing of the holiness of world .is actually less fundamental than the later Hölderlin texts. to describe the poet's experience of the presence of the 'wonderfully all-present' (GA 4. that his second 'turn' is a turn to iEreignis-thmkmg>: the kind of thinking appropriate to and informed by. The description. 86 above)) is the Ereignis experience. 1936-8. 76-7). pp. 'Berückung und Entrückung'. 179) and the Grundstimmung of cosmic 'gratitude' are the same. it is a transformation in Heidegger himself. I suggest. to repeat. their content. 54). 76-7. '[Hölderlin's] word is the Ereignis of the holy' (GA 4. precisely marks the division between the earlier and later Hölderlin texts.

'the joyful' (das Freudige). p. 'gift-giving' character of the holy (GA 4. then. as the poet puts it. in festive mood and so standing outside the drabness of 'everydayness'. In 'Holiday'. 'awesome'. pp. presents the sublime as supremely gracious. He experiences Being as.) of everything by the 'wonderfully all-present'. 'hidden under the mildness of the light encirclement' (ibid. And in 'Homecoming'. however. benevolent. in his own words. With Hölderlin. the holy is experienced as not only supremely powerful but also supremely 'gracious' (GA 4. is a gift rather than.is. ascends. Heidegger's later Hölderlin readings are absolutely right: there is no doubt at all that Hölderlin's fundamental mood is one of cosmic. in some sense morally perfect. existence as we know it. and ecstatic. life. a curse? Why. Granted that reflection on the fact that truth is disclosure and disclosure always concealment . 55). p. 'thankfulness'. p. still the sublime. GA 9. the poet. 'the highest' is described variously as 'the serenely cheerful' (das Heitere). 55. however. ascends to what Heidegger sometimes calls 'the other side' (GA 52. should we believe that the sublime is also the holy? Why should we prefer Heidegger to Schopenhauer? Hölderlin. 309-10) as he has to if it is to be truly the holy. as. The question remains. he is acquainted with the 'terror' (GA 4. At this point.Hölderlin's mood?
. is not the same as the holy. of course. as a matter of conceptual necessarily. as one which 'greets' the poet with tidings of 'joy'. Heidegger repeatedly insists on the 'gracious'. as to why should we take Hölderlin's mood to be anything more than . one would think.or a prereflective grasp of the content of such reflection reveals the world to be a sublime. For while the holy .108
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From the sublime to the holy 20. says Heidegger. 'from out of the space (All) of beings to Being' (ibid. Schopenhauer famously maintained. a question (one which has actually been with us since the discussion of 'The Origin"s conception of 'earth' in chapter 1) presents itself as urgently in need of an answer. the sublime can be morally ambivalent. p. perhaps even demonic. as Heidegger points out. for example. But why should we actually believe that the world.). 'all-creating' (self-disclosing) and therefore 'mighty'. that is. As a consequence. 'earth'-ridden place. the question of why we should in fact believe the claim that the world is a holy place. 63) of the holy Yet because the terror is.as at least we understand the term . 178).

for example. (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6. 86 above). . This reflects a theme which goes back to the 1929 lecture 'What is Metaphysics?'. 246-66. A Schopenhauerian could equally well set up Thomas Hardy as a poet of semi-divine insight and conclude that Being is demonic. who said that philosophy begins with 'astonishment' at the ordinary (though according to Heidegger. in some sense or other. Schopenhauer's fundamental mood of cosmic despair? Are we not entering the well-trampled domain of the unanswerable question as to whether the beer glass is half full or half empty? Yet if Hölderlin's (and Heidegger's) mood is to be of any philosophical interest it must be possible to say that.
.21 Being is holy because Hölderlin is a man of semi-divine powers of insight (inhabits the Nähe. 21. it is the right mood to inhabit. a claim that links Heidegger to Aristotle. of course . is 'near' to Being) and allows the content of his insight to come to presence in his poetry. we step into 'the wonder (Wunder) that around us a world worlds at all. When it comes to providing a thoughtful validation of the Hölderlinian vision Heidegger is somewhat indistinct on the question of whether it is the that or the how of the world that is of focal importance. But that. say. that we ourselves are' (see p. claim to verisimilitude than. who wrote that
How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher.432-6. .advances the argument not at all.44)
21
'Heidegger's Exegesis of Hölderlin' in Blindness and Insight (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. the remark that. but also no more. Sometimes it seems to be only the former. it is not how things are in the world that is mystical but that it exists. the claim that the truly philosophical mood is 'wonder' that there is something rather than nothing. Recall once again. that there are things and we ourselves are in their midst.this is de Man's point . that there is something rather than nothing. on the festive occasion. Paul de Man suggests that Hölderlin's role for Heidegger is that of a 'witness'. pp. Aristotle himself did not properly understand the character of that astonishment). 1983).From the sublime to the holy
109
Why should we accept it as anything more than one man's Gestalt on 'beings as a whole5 possessing no less. and to Wittgenstein. God does not reveal himself in the world .

It holds together 'mountain' and 'valley'. But. This. needs to be brought into consideration. in Heideggerian language. he claims.) of harmonious unity. Something about the nature of the clearing. 'all-creating' one is gracious. even horror. is the character of Hölderlin's ecstasy. True philosophy. present. 'mystical'. explains Heidegger. it in no way follows that it is a 'wonderful' . is that its 'creation'. recognized cosmic 'astonishment' as the beginning of true philosophy. is the unexplained arid ungrounded slide from the sublime to the holy. 'the clearing'. Beauty is. that it is 'God' who reveals himself in existence. its power concealed beneath a 'mildness'.)
. Schopenhauer. the how of existence. certainly. however. Rather. In the beautiful face there can be nothing nose-like about the ear or ear-like about the nose.as establishing the 'gracious' character of the sublime. then.) The 'thought'. 53-4). p. This peace. is the 'unifying unity' that 'sets everything into the well-separated limits and structures of its presence' {GA 4. at least implicitly. of 'light' . II. But for him. too. it may seem that only the world's thatness is under consideration. Though. on the other. it is hard to escape the conclusion that aspects of its howness are also. It seems. pp. 'the highest heaven and the deepest abyss'. for example. like Mozart's Don Giovanni. one of the names for the holy that Hölderlin uses in 'Holiday' is 'communal spirit (Geisty (GA 4. it is astonishment coloured by dismay. (Influenced by his friend Hegel. a matter for 'wonder'.the mere fact of. is by no means a matter of 'flat sameness'. is a thing of 'divine' or 'god-like' beauty (göttlichschön) (see p.in the sense of supremely pleasing place in which to find oneself. however. Granted that the existence of the world is indeed 'astonishing'. as Heidegger makes clear in the 'Holiday' discussion. 50). 101 above). p. The reason the 'mighty'.110
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The trouble with this line of thinking. p. a unity which constitutes the essence 'beauty' (GA 4. its two sides. that we cannot take the mere fact that we exist . in the ecstatic moment. within a unity or fundamental 'peace'. 171). of a face. 60). begins. On the one hand there must be harmony and balance between. (Think. then. sharply distinguished 'opposites' resting in the 'connectedness' (ibid. by way of illustration. nature. with a minor chord (The World as Will and Representation. there must be sharply defined differences between its constituent elements. It is beautiful because it embodies the 'thought' which is 'spirit'. it is the unity of 'well-distinguished opposites'.

suppose ourselves to be convinced that we really should accept that the sublime is also the holy. 180): thinkers who understand the destitution or. they demand that we 'just do it'. From Nikeism to waiting 22. Whether this offering might not be vulnerable to the very same objection as was raised against the Grundstimmung of cosmic gratitude . As thinkers of this ilk Heidegger identifies Ernst Jünger and his mentor Nietzsche (GA 52. in Nietzsche's language. as we might call them. Let us. not Heidegger's) takes refuge in some kind of 'intoxication (Rausch)' which may easily turn out to be the 'intoxication of blood (BlutrauscKf (GA 52. 'nihilism' of modernity and respond to this insight with the demand for salvation now. of 'the long patient waiting for the gift'. violent action .
.is a question to which I shall return shortly. for an immediate leading of the benighted many by the enlightened few into a 'revaluation of all values'. p. But he also says that when 'tough' (i. where necessary. Given this assumption.'hardness (die Härte)' (GA 52. patience is merely 'weakness'. is 'Ereignis-thinking'7 Heidegger says that those who have not made the transition to EreigniS'thinking are incapable of patience. however. then. They are. let us now ask what difference it makes. cosmic 'thankfulness' is the right stance towards the world as a whole because that world is a beautiful place in which to find oneself. for a moment. Being is holy because nature is beautiful. p. I think. p. we find ourselves on familiar territory: what Hölderlin-Heidegger offer with respect to the howness of creation is an aesthetic analogue of the 'argument from design'. What they demand instead is tough.e.that it is nothing more interesting than one man's (or rather two men's) Gestalt on beings-as-a-whole . 181). Here. in short. 'Nikeists'. undemocratic) action fails to produce the desired result the Nikeist (my word. and for Heidegger qua Hölderlinian thinker. instant and. For them. 181).From Nikeism to waiting
111
For Hölderlin. What difference does understanding one's world to be a holy place make to one's life and thought? How does thinking (and living) that is based on the 'Ereignisexperience' differ from thinking which is not? What.

i. in an already quoted remark. the levers of history lie entirely in human hands. for the institution now of a 'politics in the highest and most authentic sense'. Heidegger called for an overcoming of the nihilism of modernity through deindustrialization. tough action contained in the call for an alliance of poet. One inhabits 'the essential realm of metaphysics'. a reference to Nazism: a presentation of Nazism at war as the failure of Nazism as . To be noticed here is the emergence of one of the most central.attempted social revolution. (Call to mind here. themes of Heidegger's postwar philosophy.)
.e. Why should the transition to ' Ereignis-thmking' be a transition from Nikeism to waiting? For. The dehumanized workers of German industry are to recover their spirituality through becoming subsistence farmers (becoming close to 'earth') on land conquered (reclaimed. the Rilkean comparison between Being and the moon. through
22
Contained. in HPN (chapter 1 sections 14 and 21). Heidegger's critique of Nikeism is a critique of his own former self. 180) . beings and beings alone are responsible for the way that beings are. In the speeches made as rector of Freiburg University. slow patience (Langmut)' (GA 52. caught up in the intoxication of the moment. surely. for the Nikeist. the second the superfluity of Nikeism. The first concerns the futility. does not mention. a Nazi official. one who. that is. 'attends upon the coming to presence of Being'(ßCrp. a reference to Heidegger's own former Nikeism.his own former commitment to immediate. 178). for one who has ascended from beings to their 'other side'. I think. when one fails to ascend from the 'space of beings' to its 'other side' (GA 52. as. (How a deindustrialized state is supposed to retain the fruits of war in the face of industrially armed enemies Heidegger. p. however. Heidegger would have said) in the East.) Since. rather than trying to make history happen. too. I call Heidegger's 'PolPotism'. thinker. For the Ereignis-thinkev. and controversial. two reasons. p. there is nothing beyond beings.22 Inter alia. Nikeists are.of which a great deal more in chapter 4. it is immediately clear that every attempt to 'make history happen'. Given the craziness-of his 1933 position it is not surprising that he soon recovered from it. man is the maker and master of history. In contrast to the Nikeists. those who have made the transition to Ereignis-ihmkmg enter into 'the long. and state-founder. locked into 'metaphysics' (GA 52. But given that reference there is also. 'metaphysician'. he says.112
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This 1941 remark is. unmistakably. the assertion that 'man's essence is to be the one who waits'. in what. 23. says Heidegger. p. to create.42). in 1933-4. Less abstractly. 181).

More specifically. having made the transition to Ereignis-thinkmg. And it follows he says. one knows immediately that 'Being has no equal' (QCTp. a culture-wide 'revaluation of all values'. Heidegger concludes. absolute 'evil' (IM p. 'Therefore'. With the deepening of Heidegger's understanding of Hölderlin in the later texts. 'joyful'. a matter of the age's being the time of the 'stored-up treasure (gesparter Fund)'. rather. the attempt to force the 'return of the gods'. night undergoes a radical reappraisal. by force. so to believe oneself the master of Being would reveal. In the early (pvs-Ereignis) texts Heidegger reads Hölderlin's image always as an absolute and unredeemed blackness. either positively or negatively. The 'darkening of the world. For having understood that world is 'destined' by. says Heidegger. Through 'Homecoming'. 46). and. Given that we live in a world that is 'destined' to us by a graciousness. that in 'Bread and Wine' the 'wine-god's priests' journey through 'holy night'. it follows that our lives are. is an attempt to force the coming of that which is already 'coming'. Modernity. Those with insight into that which is do not. Just as believing oneself the master of God would show one to have no god. a new historical epoch. The second. The reason for this. is a time of 'night'. of 'the festival'. the awesomely self-concealing. Hölderlin teaches him. that
the citizens are not to strive.
. in 'Poet's Calling'. to make their own god and so. in the Hölderlin texts. of 'artifice (Listen)'. we know. as we have seen. 28)
This prohibition on Nikeism reappears a decade later in 'Building Dwelling Thinking'. by a human doing founded merely on itself (QCTp. is futile. 38). 'God's default is no deficiency (Mangel)'. Heidegger notices. however. 44). in gift-giving hands. 38) stands for 'the demonic'. (GA 4. the flight of the gods' (IM p. through artifice. reason given for rejecting Nikeism in favour of 'waiting' is that. he experiences night as 'serenely cheerful'. is that though our age is indeed the time of 'God's default'. that default is no mere absence but is. expanding on Hölderlin's rejection. one sees that the attempt to overcome the 'destitution' of the present by precipitate action is unnecessary.From Nikeism to waiting
113
human endeavour alone. precisely. is the self-disclosure of. much more prominent. that it 'will never allow itself to be mastered. one's 'forgetfulness' of Being. as it were. p. to do away with the supposed deficiency.

Initiates. says Hölderlin. it becomes clear that the age of God's default is no more an age of 'deficiency' than winter is a season of 'deficiency'. too. In reality night. the 'winter' time of human history. II. diachronic opposites: the diurnal rotation. we have seen. is something 'positive' (GA 52. The time of the default of God is. 54-5). The default of God. 150)
Of this passage.also in a public lecture.23 But the same must have been true when the remark wasfirstmade . too. is manifested in the beauty of the world's 'design'. vol. 'intimate always (ahnen sie immer)' the coming summer (GA 4. presented in a public lecture in 1951. know that nature never sleeps. In 'Holiday' the point is put. against his own earlier entanglement in it. is 'night' time. in 'stored up' form. the holy place in which the 'past (vergangene)' and the 'coming gods' are concealed. in terms of a seasonal metaphor. too. for Heidegger. eds. Typically. 104. however. in the far less secure circumstances of 1943. 'its rest the still preparation of a Coming (eines Kommenden)' (GA 4. In the very depths of misfortune they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn. are of synchronic 'opposites' . . under Hölderlin's influence. Perez-Gomez and S. for example. however. Heidegger's comment is directed against the Nikeism of Nazism and again. Heidegger's examples. . it takes its place in the cyclical rhythm of 'opposites' that constitutes the diachronic beauty of Being's self-revelation. is the future festival already present. therefore. that the winter rest is her 'self-collection for [the]. pp. it only appears so when we forget the dusk and the dawn. the 'mother of the day'. we know. that human history.
.
23
'Lessons of a Dream'. 109-10). Why. 'seasonal'. In fact. (PLTp. Parcell (Montreal and Kingston: McGill and Queen's University Press. To the undiscerning it seems that everything lies in frozen sleep. however.mountain and valley (see p. Given this perspective. 86-8). pp. Heidegger suggests. Karsten Harries comments correctly that few in the audience could have missed the reference to Hitler. 110 above). for example. But the thought of a beautiful unity of opposites embraces. perhaps more perspicuously. at p. and the cycle of the seasons. in the present age? Why is it already in the process of 'coming'? Being's 'graciousness'. coming'. 1998). in the discussion of 'Holiday'. says Hölderlin. a design that embraces 'opposites'. in his early Hölderlin readings) night is regarded as absolutely 'negative' nothing more than the absence of day. 91-108. like winter. Chora. pp. They. in Freiburg. Rather. pp. A. is cyclical. says Heidegger (as.114
Hölderlin: the later texts
make their gods for themselves and do not worship idols.

medieval and modern) we have no inductive grounds at all for being confident that there will be any 'glorious summer' to banish our present 'winter of discontent'. This. Cyclical thinking of the above sort permeates not just the later Hölderlin texts but also Heidegger's postwar philosophy. An evil genius. somehow. in Hegel or Marx. would be compelled to construct the same degree of unity-between-opposites. notice. is a point of view
. 'season'. is the status of this cyclical. from the unity of opposites that is its synchronic beauty? Possibly.24
24
Could one not. in the hope of its increase). 41). postnihilistic age will occur (QCTp. 33) (not. it has to be admitted. however. common-sense induction (not to mention scientific theory) tells us that winter will indeed be followed by summer but (particularly if. view of history in Heidegger's philosophy? Are we really intended to accept it as. The Question Concerning Technology'. the appropriate response consists in the observation that we are offered no ground at all to believe the cyclical view of history. it continues. Schopenhauer claims that the so-called 'design' of the world. for example. while The Turning' affirms Hölderlin's version of 'dawn begins at the darkest hour':
But where the danger is. is no more than the minimum condition of existence. except for the fact that synchronic beauty is itself merely a Gestalt. What. for example. as The Origin' suggests. the diachronic 'beauty' of the world. the inexorably progressive character of Geisfs self-disclosure is guaranteed by the dialectical laws of history? If so. the seasonal view of history is just a bad joke: a mere Gestalt dressed up with an authority it in no way possesses. when 'the turning' to a postmodern. (QCTp. perhaps. extrapolate to the 'seasonal' view of history. a metaphysically guaranteed fact that the future 'festival' really is 'coming'. says that we are to 'foster the growth of the saving power in its increase' (QCTp. there have only ever been three Western epochs. bent on creating a torture chamber for his own entertainment. Offered as metaphysical fact. grows The saving power also. But that it will occur seems never to be doubted. of there being any world at all.Knowledge or faith?
115
Knowledge or faith? 24. far from proving it to be the work of a benevolent creator. somehow guaranteed as. 42)
No one knows. Solid. the ancient.

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But, in reality, Heidegger cannot possibly intend the cyclical Gestalt to be taken as metaphysical fact. For he says, in the Nietzsche lectures, that for all we know, the age of Gestell may be indefinitely 'self-perpetuating' (N III, p. 6) (as some have suggested of the American 'Goldilocks' economy that began with the 1990s), In (perhaps surprisingly) 'The Turning', Heidegger generalizes the point to cover all attempts to discover a shape to world history: 'All attempts to reckon existing reality morphologically', he says, 'are truthless and without foundation' (QCTp. 48). Yet there is nothing, surely, more 'morphological' than the 'seasonal' view of history elevated to the status of metaphysical fact. The fundamental reason Heidegger must reject all such attempts is clear. Any attempt to delimit - and so limit - Being's character, to impose pattern, and hence laws, upon the process of its self-disclosure as world, is an attempt to force upon Being a particular (human-friendly) nature and hence an infringement'of its inscrutability. Instead of 'earth', 'the mystery', 'the ungraspable', the 'other side' of beings becomes just another being (albeit, as I shall discuss in the next chapter, a being of a 'higher' type than manifest beings). Failing, therefore, to rise above the 'space of beings', the attempt falls squarely into the category of 'metaphysics'. With special reference to his doctrine of 'the eternal return of the same', Heidegger calls Nietzsche 'the last metaphysician', and portrays himself as the first post-metaphysical thinker. But the cyclical view of history is, surely, simply a vaguer, less specific version of Nietzsche's idea of history as the 'eternal recurrence' of everything that happens down to the very last detail. Offered as metaphysical fact, the cyclical view is, therefore, inescapably - 'metaphysical'. There is, then, good reason to suppose that Heidegger does not offer the cyclical view of history as deep knowledge about the way reality actually is. Though 'The Turning' only says that 'when and how' 'the turning', the return of 'the festival', will happen is unknown, Heidegger must, in truth, also maintain that whether it will 'come to pass . . . no one knows' (QCTp. 41). (One might be tempted here by the thought that 'all possibilities are realized over infinite time' but that, of course, is metaphysics of, in Kant's language, the most 'dogmatic' kind.) But why, then, does Heidegger omit the 'whether' of the turning, continue, into the 1950s, to speak as if the only uncertainty is its 'when'?

Knowledge or faith?

117

Following Hölderlin, as we have seen, Heidegger says the poets of wintertime 'intimate always' the oncoming spring and summer (GA 4, pp. 54-5). This, read ä la de Man, might be a presentation of the view that those who stand above ordinary mortals - 'between men and gods' (HE p. 312) - have occult knowledge of the future. But another reading is, not that they know, but rather that they are always on the lookout for signs of a return of the festival. Such signs are always present since, as Heidegger regularly insists, cultural epochs are always complex phenomena. Beneath their dominant and defining character they are always, too, 'a passing by and simultaneity of early and late' (PLTp. 185), a mixture of remnants of a past epoch and signs, hints, 'intimations', of a future one. These latter are, on the proposed reading, what the poets of wintertime, and those influenced by them, are on the lookout for. They 'wait for intimations of [the gods'] . . .coming' (PLTp. 150). Such waiting, however, as we have seen (section 9 above), is no merely passive waiting for but is, rather, an active waiting on, a 'foster[ing] the growth of the saving power' 'here and now in little things' (QCT p. 33). It is, in other words, an exercise of the human 'essence' of 'guardianship', of being 'the one who attends upon the coming to presence of Being in that he guards it' (QCT p. 42), This, I suggest, is the proper reading of 'intimation'. It is a matter, not of occult knowledge but of, rather, cultivating those seeds which are the possibility of a hoped-for future. It is, however, plausibly a feature of human action that unless one has faith in the eventual achievement of the goal at which it is aimed one will be unable to conduct the pursuit of the goal in, in Heidegger's language, a 'resolute' manner. Kant saw this in the final formulation, in the Critique of Judgment, of the 'moral argument' for the existence of God, a god conceived at this late stage in his thinking as, in essence, history. Unless, Kant says, the virtuous man has faith that the underlying tide of history is moving in the same direction as his own efforts to make the world a better place, he will succumb, in the end, to moral despair. Heidegger, I suggest, may be read as possessing a similar thought: unless the cultivator of the intimations of the return of the gods has faith that they will, in the end, return, unless he believes that, ultimately, history is 'on his side', he will be unable to practise that cultivation in a convinced and committed manner.

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This, I believe, is why Heidegger continues, in his postwar philosophy, to speak not of the 'possible' or 'hoped for' but rather of the 'coming' festival, not of 'fostering the saving power' in the hope of its increase but in, simply, 'its increase'. The cyclical view of history, the Hölderlinian Grundstimmung of cosmic gratitude, is exemplary not because it corresponds to known metaphysical truth but rather because it is the faith that is the precondition of 'resoluteness' in one's fostering of the 'saving power'. 25. While Being's sublimity is, then, something that can be known, its holiness is a matter of faith, a faith Heidegger himself was infected with by Hölderlin. At the very end of 'The Turning' Heidegger, so to speak, steps, for a moment, outside his own faith to make clear that that, indeed, is its status. No longer, that is to say, does he speak, as he has done throughout the rest of the essay, as if only the 'when' of the turning is unknown but allows, now, that so, too, is the 'whether'. 'Will', he now asks, the turning happen? Will insight into that which is bring itself disclosingly to pass? Will we . . . be . . . brought home into the essential glance of Being ...? Will we dwell as those at home in nearness, so that we will belong primordially within the fourfold of sky, earth, mortals and divinities? Will insight into that which is bring itself disclosingly to pass .. .? And he responds to this catechism, not with an affirmation, but with, rather, a prayer: May world in its worlding be the nearest of all nearing that nears, as it brings the truth of Being near to man's essence and so gives man to belong to the disclosing bringing-to-pass that is a bringing into its own. (QCTp. 49) And it is, in part, perhaps, this element of faith contained in the turn to Ereignis-thmking to which Heidegger refers in his 'Letter to a Young Student' when he says that he can 'provide no credentials' for what he has said, no 'checks' that it 'agrees with "reality"' (PLTp. 186). Does this, then, mean - to return to the issue left unresolved at the end of section 21 - that there is no sense at all in which the Hölderlinian Gestalt of cosmic 'thankfulness' can be said to represent the right stance towards life and the world? One point to notice is that while the 'seasonal'

Knowledge or faith?
119
view of history is only a Gestalt. one might well ask. the Schopenhauerian stance of cosmic despair? Given. it seems to me. should anyone want to resist its adoption. and given that the Gestalt is the precondition of redemptive action. as we might also call it. the 'New Age'. that the Hölderlinian stance is both possible and productive there is.
. it is also at least a Gestalt. therefore. why. It is perfectly possible that history is 'seasonal'. Given this. a good sense in which it is also the 'right' one to adopt. that we do indeed inhabit the time of the 'coming' festival. to prefer. for example. of.

16). The beginning of Heidegger's path of thinking about art was. Turning to the particular arts. its works 'the steering-steered (gesteuert-steuernderi) instruments of the cybernetic language of information-exchange' (ZSD p. And so far as the reception of art. for example. 41). these sweeping condemnations are 120
. while film is.4
Modern art
1.. from the point of view of 'The Origin'. even intensify. not merely the gods but art. world civilization'. 140). we find that poetry has become absorbed into the industrial system. 64). permeated by thoughts of the death of art. Heidegger claims. in the postwar writings to which I now turn. Once again. projected and led. 'the universality of [our]. rather. what we find. Since it 'arises no longer from the shaping boundaries of an ethnic or national world but is. If we think about modern art. modern (so-called) art is a farewell to everything that art once was (D p. So. xiii). Here we discover the discussion of art to be peppered by a regular litany of apparently exceptionless generalizations pronouncing the total absence of art (as a non-trivial phenomenon) from the world of Western modernity. about the place of art in modernity.. by scientific technology'. too. has deserted us. it seems. has become mere 'literary production' (D p. so far as modern humanity's capacity to respond in a significant manner to art is concerned. Surprisingly. is that art occurs in 'empty space' since 'we no longer possess an essential relation to art' (KuTp. 153). as such. in its construction and constitution. modern art is said to be nothing more than a fully integrated part of 'the sphere of the techno-scientific world-construction' (SvG p. an integral part of 'the Europeanization of man and the earth [which] attacks at the source everything of an essential nature' (OWL p. sepulchral thoughts persist. we saw.

as already observed. a considerable number of friends and acquaintances: inter alios. communal space.'aestheticization' . character of modernity. in the Middle Ages. 3-8. and the art historians Hans Jantzen and Heinrich Petzet. Denkerfahrungen (D) is an important source for many of Heidegger's published. biographical details is Heinrich Petzet's Encounters and Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. in sculpture. and. the Basel gallery director and friend of Paul Klee.
. yet atomized. in painting. observations on individual artists. Klee and Cezanne. 1993). the art collector Ernst Beyeler. the facts of his own biography. pp. Georg Schmit. however. but also that there could be none. second. ed. (The latter he encouraged to publish Rilke's Letters on Cezanne and to pursue book projects concerned with both Cezanne and Klee. and. about the absence of public. and about the trivialization . and other. in music. 1977) and Jähnig's contribution to Kunst und Technik {KuT). Short of a world-historical sea change in our culture. Moreover. Georg Trakl.in apparently total contradiction to the 'death of art' generalizations . the social preconditions of such an artwork do not exist. great esteem for. Stefan George and Rainer Maria Rilke. Rene Char. 'Art and Space' appears in Man and World 6.1 Not least significant is the fact that
1
The chief source for these. by church and cathedral. and. in poetry. in architecture. it might well seem obvious that not only is there no Greekparadigm artwork in modernity. Stravinsky and Carl Orff. What renders postwar Heidegger's stance to the art of his own times manifestly problematic. 1973.of modernity's expectations of art. Art and Space'. Neske (Pfullingen: Neske. the high esteem he expresses for what turns out to be actually a considerable number of individual artists. And in the officially despised 'art business' (KuTp. Heidegger expressed. is . in fact. G. Bernhard Heiliger and Eduado Chillida. if we think about the globalized. Also important are the contributions by Hartmut Buchner. perfectly obvious that there is nothing in Western modernity which plays the role played. by temple and amphitheatre. as opposed to reported. Francois Fedier and Dieter Jähnig in Erinnerung an Martin Heidegger.) In the mid-1950s he made a special excursion to Holland to see the Van Goghs in the newly opened Kröller-Müller museum outside Arnhem and was in frequent contact with the Erker Gallery in the Swiss town of St Gallen for which he wrote (or rather engraved on lithographer's stone) the essay on sculpture.Modern art
121
completely unsurprising. For it is. inter alia. Van Gogh. Braque.first. Paul Celan. xiii) of modernity he had. for le Cobusier. in Greece.

positively pernicious). as he had done all his life. then. simply by gently repeating it. at least. the possibility of combining that esteem with a clear theoretical conscience. not the mountain peaks of a generally thriving world of art. This raises the question of what the principle of selection is which determines the exceptions as the exceptions. to present the artists in whom Heidegger is interested as. überhaupt. and more familiar. I suggest. of course. Rudolf Augustein. persuades Heidegger to 'cross out' the claim that modern art. but rather something quite different: the. 'untimely' exceptions to the rule.122
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Heidegger continued. Heidegger was by no means insensible to the profileraising value of sepulchral soundbites and knew when he had been caught out. the prevailing aesthetic order. evidently. up to his elbows in the 'art business' of his times. The self-liberation from the tyranny of the Greek paradigm carried out in the later Hölderlin texts. The effect of the generalizations is thus to establish a duality between the general character of modern art.
. exceptions to the rule. in Nietzsche's sense. his relationships. as we shall see. on the other. then. and the few. simply. opened up. and in opposition to. The main point of the generalizations is thus. too.sometimes of considerable quality. which rendered his theorizing about art consistent with his esteem for Hölderlin as a poet. Heidegger's real position is the (less dramatic. less eyecatching. and his judgments on individual artists are completely at odds with his generalized pronouncements on the character of modern art as such. in a word. on the one hand. what it was that opened up the possibility of his esteem for individual artists of modernity. What is clear. have to be regarded as rhetorical exaggerations. or at the very least 'valid'. less slogan-like) assertion that most modern art is trivial2 (or else. a place in his thinking for the esteem of other artists of modernity. 'contemporary artists'. artists at the margins. but significant. out of step with. sense in which the «term means. is 'destructive' (HCp. 115). but also in the narrower.cto write poetry . His life. opened up. that is to say. 'the modern paradigm' allows Heidegger consistently to acknowledge that modernity contains not merely the art of 'pastry cooks' but also 'great'. Having completed our study of the Hölderlin texts we know. is that the coming into being of. as I called it. The late Heidegger was. art. But why.
2
At an interesting moment in the Spiegel interview the interviewer. the continuation of the generalized pronouncements of the death of art? These pronouncements. for 'artists of modernity' not only in the broad sense that includes Hölderlin.

of that 'other side'. in brief (I shall have considerably more to say about it in section 20 below). unsacred place that is the world of modernity Concerning the second question. The cause of this is described. is. monotonous. as 'enframing'. historical process in terms of which Western humanity has lost what I called the 'festive' mode of disclosure (see chapter 3 section 3). What oblivion of Being entails we also already know: oblivion to the 'awesomeness' of truth. is a time of extreme 'destitution5. in a decidedly idiosyncratic use of the term. ignorance. Since Being is beings together with their 'other side'. the reduction of everything to 'resource'. Heidegger oscillates between these. the lighted side of the 'globe of Being' together with its dark side. only made possible by the completion of a long and gradual. Heidegger's most fundamental characterization of metaphysics is to call it 'oblivion of Being' (P p. Modernity. Heidegger's answer. that is to say. in the language of Being and Time. 'ontological' and 'ontic' senses of * world'. To enter that condition is for the world to 'obtrude and accumulate in a dry. the nature of which lies in the 'extinction of the divine radiance'. 318). for it to become the dis-enchanted. There are two questions to be asked about that which. here. The fundamental mistake that creates metaphysics is the failure to see the dependence of truth (as
3
'World' in the sense. its failure to live any longer in the light of 'the holy'. 17). modernity's disenchantment. in the first instance. Metaphysics which may occur either as explicit philosophical doctrine or implicitly in the layman's intuitive stance to reality . according to Heidegger. not of horizon of intelligibility. The cause of this is what Heidegger calls 'metaphysics'.Anti-metaphysical art
123
Anti-metaphysical art 2. rather. we know. is that one enters the wasteland of metaphysics through a (explicit or implicit) misunderstanding of truth (P p. structure of disclosure. to the sublimity of world. but meaning. the fact that it has become the disclosure of Being which defines the modern epoch. 'world'3 together with 'earth'. But the world-historical take-over by 'enframing'.is the failure to 'ascend' from the 'space of beings' to its 'other side'. and therefore oppressive way' (QCTp.
. 280). the totality of beings. Heidegger designated with the word 'metaphysics': what is it? and how does it come about? The answer to the first question has already been given.

The art which is important to our 'needy' times is art which provides an antidote to metaphysics. 'drives out every other possibility of revealing' {QCT p. one day. in human beings' 'forms of life' (see chapter 1 section 18). 27). Our times are destitute because of the absence of the gods. the principle by which Heidegger selects the exceptional artists he considers to be genuinely significant is the overcoming of metaphysics. we already know. is the overcoming of metaphysics.one takes its articulation to be the . human 'linguistic' practices. in the language of Being and Time. exactly. an understanding which.articulation of the fundamental structure of reality itself. as one might put it 'absolutizing' of a horizon of disclosure takes place.124
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correspondence) upon the world-disclosure that happens in. the holiness of our world. the insight that truth depends on a disclosure which is always also a concealment disappears. That.uniquely correct . Because. the re-enchantment of the world. Only in the poet's preservation of the holy 'aether' is the danger of its complete extinction . of such vital importance? What is it that sets the art of the modern paradigm apart from the triviality of 'aesthetics' as something corresponding to a genuine 'need'? Let us reconsider this question. that is.of. reappropriates for us the sublimity. and only in. as Heidegger puts it. With one answer to the question we are already well acquainted. one fails to see the projected character of one's horizon of disclosure . Yet why. because 'no god gathers men and things unto himself and so 'disposes the world's history'. oblivion to the 'other side' of beings and hence to the majesty of Being. the 'meaning of being' or 'fundamental ontology' that one inhabits .the arrival of an age of endless godslessness averted. they might once more be found to be present. is what artists are 'for' in needy times. Another 'turn' 3. Only in his infection of others with a renewed sense of the holy
. The result is that oblivion to the occluded possibilities of disclosure sets in. in other words. When this. there is no Greek-paradigm artwork. The importance of art which helps cure us of metaphysics is that it keeps alive and cultivates the possibility of a return of the gods by preserving and cultivating an 'abode' in which. Since the root of the problem of modernity is metaphysics. Because.

. 161). Nonetheless. have a being. am a 'plenitude' of 'facets'. this 'at-homeness'. This answer to the question of the importance of the overcoming of metaphysics Heidegger never abandons. that is . 'homelessness'(2? Wpp. at least ostensibly. Heidegger's capitalization) of beings. which we. are said to lack? Postwar Heidegger identifies dwelling as the human essence: 'To be a human being means . I shall call this 'transcendence'. what seems to me distinctive about the postwar texts is that. Dwelling. as is indicated by the fact that the 'bin' of 'ich bin' (I am) comes from the Middle High German and Anglo-Saxon 'buan\ to dwell (PLTp. 213).attending to the Latin derivation of the word . along with every other being. 363. What is this 'dwelling'. in the poet's 'poeticizing' of 'earth' is the possibility preserved of the foundational values of Western culture becoming. 217-18)? Clearly Heidegger must be operating with two different senses of 'dwelling'. (Sometimes I shall drop the 'ordinary' and just say 'dwelling'. 217) . 147). p. a new analysis of 'our destitution'. The fundamental destitution of modernity is. says Heidegger. says 'Building Dwelling Thinking' is a 'plight of dwelling' (PLTp.Another 'turn'
125
can there be a 'fostering of the saving power in its increase'. the 'Other' (GA 15. 4.standing out of the clearing of world and into its 'other side'. which transcends this 'clearing'. man's 'ex-sistence'. answer to the question.his 'standing-out' (B W p. unlike their predecessors. How can 'man' dwell 'all of the time' yet 'homelessness' be the condition of 'contemporary man' (BWpp. That transcendence is something we all possess is a simple consequence of the understanding of truth as disclosive concealment. 217-18). once more. Let us refer to the dwelling which is the human essence as 'essential dwelling' and that which is missing from modernity as 'ordinary dwelling'. Our plight. .
. in modernity. 'history'-disposing values. says the 'Letter on Humanism'. is 'nearness to Being'.) Essential dwelling. Since this world is just one of an unlimited number of potential disclosures of Being. they provide a second. it follows that I. is not an occasional or isolated achievement. additional. sacred to it. Rather it belongs to 'every man and all of the time' (PLTp. according to Heidegger. to dwell'. This second answer begins with. Only. becoming once more authoritative. less metaphorically.

on the one hand. therefore. then. since such thinking 'calls mortals into their dwelling' (PLTp. and every other being's. transcendence. In other words. that is to say. the cause of homelessness is simply 'metaphysics'. Says Heidegger. in releasing us from metaphysics it allows us to dwell.that is. to make the experience of our own and everything else's transcendence an integral part of our lives. We fail to understand. yet poetically man dwells upon this earth' . Anti-metaphysical art is. is obviously that of explicating the connection between overcoming metaphysics. 5. since this is what the poets of needy times found. we fail to understand and appropriate our own. therefore. 'the holy' . The crucial task. we dwell. The crucial question. and dwelling on the other. that is. 'full of merit. as one might put it. encaged. Before addressing this issue. 161. That the poem is authentic Hölderlin has been challenged by some scholars on the grounds that it appears in no surviving handwritten manuscript. I should like to draw attention to the following point. If. but come to 'experience and take over'.we achieve dwelling. 'Poetically man dwells' is the Hölderlin quotation4 that occurs more frequently than any other in the post-war texts. we do not merely affirm intellectually. in the age of the absence of the gods dwelling is possible: 'as soon as man gives thought to his homelessness' 'it is a misery no longer'. because. Because we are imprisoned. the world's transcendence of itself. 'the poetic'. Even. is dwelling. is why an appropriation of one's 'essential dwelling' should produce anything which merits being described as dwelling in the ordinary sense. important.in full.
4
The quotation . Heidegger rebuts the challenge in 'Das Wohnen des Menschen' ('Man's Dwelling') of 1970 (D pp. at-homeness in the world. first emphasis mine). of (ordinary) dwelling.
. however.126
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Homelessness. lack. Overcoming metaphysics is something you and I (provided it is granted to us to come under the power of antimetaphysical thought and art) can achieve here and now. therefore. aided by the art of the modern paradigm. By being released from the domain of metaphysics and out into 'the poetic' (PUT p. here.is from a poem which begins 'In lovely blueness'. by it. 228) . failure 'properly to experience and take over our [essential] dwelling' (BW p. to inhabit. So. if Heidegger is right. according to this second answer. because we are victims of 'oblivion of Being'. is. 153-60) with a masterly display of literary scholarship. 217).

'we are not yet saved' (PLTp.by. the health or otherwise of the culture as a whole. as we may call it. but rather an individual or. out into. During the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s.Another 'turn'
127
These reflections yield a new perspective on the art of the modern paradigm. an individual's breaking out of the cage of metaphysics. 'dispose the world's history'. Salvation. its key concepts. 33). (It makes little. In The Question Concerning Technology' Heidegger says that 'by looking into the constellation of truth' . without alienation.and more prominent . in other words. we return to an attribute which individuals either possess or do not possess. is conceived as what one may call a 'worW-turning'. with the focus on dwelling. 'equa-
. of 'salvation' as a worldhistorical phenomenon . understanding that truth is disclosive concealment and world merely the intelligible 'side' of the unfathomable 'mystery' . 128) region of transcendence and holiness. Salvation. rather. 'What must we do to promote the end of the nihilism of our world-historical epoch?' but. however. In fact. as Rilke calls it. In Being and Time Heidegger's primary (though not exclusive) focus is the individual . individual attributes. however. in the postwar texts. are all. 'personal turning'. his focus shifts strongly away from individual and on to collective Dasein. post-destitute age.the arrival of a new 'God'. Authenticity. however. What concerns him during this period is. Rather. in their primary application. It surfaces. it seems to me. and in the title of the Spiegel interview ('Only a God can save us'j. Now. and is completed by. once again.conception of salvation in the postwar texts consisting in. for example. a new Greek-paradigm artwork. He says this because he is thinking. here. consists in. in this age of the absence of the gods?' (The centrality of Gelassenheit. 'How are you and I to live. first of all in the 1946 'What Are Poets For?'. here and now. the turning of Western culture as a whole to a new. it withdraws into the background. sense to speak of a culture as dwelling or not dwelling. here.individual 'Dasein'. there is another . above all. in the prayer for the return of the Greek-paradigm artwork at the end of The Turning' (see chapter 3 section 25) and in the title of the Spiegel interview. 'the open' (PLT p. postmodern. from this perspective. not a collective. anxiety in the face of death. which will. mortality itself.) It is not that the concern for the health of Western culture as a whole disappears. In the postwar texts the focal question is not. if any.

a turn that has implications for art. that late Heidegger ignores the earlier concern for collective salvation. that is. As long. to my mind. the artist of the modern paradigm can never count as being of the highest rank since his sole value consists in his preparing of the ground for a goal that can only be achieved by an artist of a quite different type: in terms of the distinction deployed towards the end of the previous chapter. too strongly (though never exclusively) collectivist thinking which precedes it. to Heidegger's postwar thinking is another manifestation of this turn (or return) from the collective to the individual) It is not. to the question of the connection between overcoming metaphysics and dwelling left dangling at the beginning of section 5. a perspective comes into being that involves no invidious comparison between the artist of the modern paradigm and another.which. What is rather the case is that what occurs in postwar Heidegger is a further pluralization of values. as we will shortly see. makes the postwar thinking more attractive than much of the. as I say. now. Why. one might feel. does anti-metaphysical art facilitate dwelling? What. The individual 'turning' becomes valued as an end in itself and not merely as a means to the world 'turning'. the introduction of individual salvation as a value in its own right. The reason for this is that once the project of world-historical social engineering has been abandoned. in the 'ordinary' sense. The artist of the modern paradigm can now be unreservedly acknowledged as 'great' . however. With. at least.128
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nimity' or 'releasement'. as Heidegger looks at things solely from the world-historical perspective. is precisely how Heidegger wants to think of. What is dwelling? 6. This pluralization of concern seems to me to mark yet another significant 'turn' in Heidegger's thinking. Cezanne and Klee. type of art. the answer to 'What must I do to achieve dwelling?' becomes identical with the answer to 'What must I do to promote the revival of the culture as a whole?' In each case the answer is: 'overcome metaphysics'. by the 'epic' rather than the 'lyrical' artist. is dwelling?
. to return. It is this return to the individual which. 'highest essence'-embodying.

People do not litter their homes in the way they litter motorways.the dweller experiences herself as cared for by her world. . as a matter of conceptual necessity. 'the beckoning messengers of the Godhead'. to experience one's place as a Frye or Heimat (homeland). 'Mortals dwell' in that they 'care for the fourfold' of earth..or. Dwelling is.178). To be at home somewhere. that is. second. then. When this four-part structure lights up poetically. the dweller is the agent of 'sparing and preserving'. 'preserved from harm and danger. 179). Heidegger's emphasis). 150. 'experiencing and taking over' one's
5
In Being and Time Heidegger analyses human 'being-in-the-world' in terms of a number of its structural or necessary features. 'on earth'..5 Dwelling is. postwar Heidegger's preferred term for 'world' (PLT p. 47). But he also indicates. is. . sky.What is dwelling?
129
In 'Building Dwelling Thinking' Heidegger says that' the fundamental character of dwelling is. Dwelling. 149. which he calls 'existentials'. 'caring for' . Here the dweller is the patient of 'sparing and preserving'.). first. to dwell
. 7. 150-1). that this 'sparing and preserving' . safeguarded' (ibid. free from danger within it .is double-aspected. that is. mortals and divinities (PLT pp. . the fundamental values of one's culture light up as divinities. however. in a subtle passage requiring careful reading. in brief. This analysis seems to reflect intuitive notions about dwelling. On the one hand dwelling is being in what old German calls 'das Frye\ the 'free' place.. the care and conservation of her world by the dweller. 'beneath the sky' and 'among mortals' is postwar Heidegger's revised account of the existentials of human 'being-in-the-world'. climate as 'sky' ('the vaulting path of the sun . when. a kind of fundamental security . In my 'What is Dwelling?' I argue that being 'before the divinities'. is the dweller's 'safeguarding] each thing in its nature' (ibid. when all this happens then one is said to 'belong within the fourfold' {PLT pp.). both caring for and being cared for. that is (ßCTp. in this aspect. to experience there a security that is lacking in places in which one is an alien. What have these two aspects of dwelling got to do with the overcoming of metaphysics. and the 'homely' (in the sense of the German heimisch) is the to-be-cared-for in a way that the alien place is not. On the other hand. the place where one is 'at peace'.and. as one might also translate 'Schonen9. with. our part of the planet as 'earth' ('the serving bearer blossoming and fruiting'). sparing and preserving (Schonen)' (PLTp. the wandering glitter of the stars') and men as 'mortals' ('shrinefsj of the Nothing').

96). 92). final and absolute darkness . In chapter 3 (section 3) we saw how it was 'the festival' which kept enframing at bay. is inevitable. of the disclosure of reality as 'resource'. Why. This means that entry into death is an entry into absolute nothingness. is only made possible by the loss of 'enchantment'. to experience it as keeping one 'safe'? Consider the question of what. because they themselves must first create all this' {IM pp. without statute and limit. to repeat. 152-3). But death.130
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dwelling in the essential sense? Why should doing this produce these results? Let us begin with the second aspect of dwelling. moreover. Overcoming metaphysics. moves one to keep one's world 'safe'. we know. It is to experience one's world as a sublime or 'holy' place. p. something 'destined' to us by Being. But the appropriate . PLTp. he says. a necessary truth. 18). To overcome metaphysics is. to experience one's world as the self-disclosure of the self-concealing. there is 'beyond'. At one. 'nothing'. It follows that to one suffering from metaphysics. Since 'representational' thinking must always occur within a horizon of intelligibility. the tobe-exploited. 363). then. therefore. its self-disclosure as world. beings. Heidegger lapses into this incoherence.conceptually speaking. The 'creators' of the world are. transparent to 'earth'. that threatens to break into the 'clearing' and to claim one at any moment. to the victim of metaphysics. of the 'festive mood' as I called it. of the festival. is the precondition of the rise of Gestell. PLTp. 151). 'abysmal' (BT 152. that the rise of Gestell.7 Overcoming metaphysics thus liberates us from the world-exploitation of 'enframing' and returns us to our 'essence' as the 'guardians' of Being of. Death is annihilation.
. in the language of The Origin'. and I think. the opposite of
6
7
^//-disclosure since an ultimate horizon of disclosure is never human 'handiwork' (QCT p. The impossibility of this task is obvious. world presents itself as a pinpoint of light surrounded by an infinite. .6 as. The decline. 'empty' (/Dp. . This is no historical generalization but rather. safe from exploitation and spoliation.a darkness. only one point during the period of his brief intoxication with Prometheanism.) So. 'negative' (GA 15. the only possible response to a world experienced as holy is care and conservation. without structure and order. an absolute. that is. happen at any moment. the notion of our planning and constructing our own ultimate horizon would have us thinking before we could think. eternal. other than. And it may. 19) and annihilating nothing. It is always something we receive. now. it seems to me. the world is an w«safe place. Being's 'truth'. Notice. 'nihilistic' (OWL p. from the perspective of one who is imprisoned by metaphysics. without city and place . The answer is. of course. we know. 28. (apolis. (This is the spiritual side to the awfulness of pain: it is a reminder of mortality (compare PLTp. we also know. does it lead one to experience oneself as secure within it.

too. because we think of death as that which happens always tomorrow. As many have argued. But why. Thus described the world is. I suggest.very often. but this is a life. perhaps even incompatible with. yet experienced no terror. I would suggest. never today. 'death' and 'the nothing'. (See. 161-2). II. everyone would quickly plump for atheism (The World as Will and Representation. some accident or 'failure in the health system' happens). the fundamental point of religion has always been to provide us with an assurance of the non-finality of death. the terror of death is modulated into disquiet.8 It is with reason. however. he emphasizes. in other words.and books . further. are.as an inescapable . If we look death in the face we experience terror. the key words of which are 'thrownness'. did he write so many books? Under Rilke's influence. the world of Being and Time.feature of the human condition (BT 188-9). section 17 below. The most fundamental character of the metaphysical life . immortal. Twenty thousand years of human religion. unease. the existence of gods. It is true that Being and Time tries to mark out a conception of the flourishing life. constitutes a kind of (very) short story. 'being delivered over'. I suggest. that most of the time (as Being and Time points out in telling detail) we evade such a direct confrontation. Were it to be somehow proved that our immortality is independent of. Being and Time is. reputation . not its overcoming.) There. just by itself. because we think of it as something that happens to others rather than oneself (and even then only when something extraordinary and unexpected. a story with a tripartite plot and unmistakable tone.is anxiety. then.'existential' . 'care'.What is dwelling?
131
the Frye. unsafe place and as such cannot constitute a 'home'. in Hölderlin's language . as Schopenhauer points out. our selves as we know them. Heidegger suggests that the life of 'self-assertion' is a 'constant negation of death'. in order to assure ourselves that our egos. therefore. 'abandonment'. (Notice that this list. But in anxiety one's world is experienced as a threatening. anxiety.its Grundstimmung. the life lived in the light of an 'authentic' facing up to death and commitment to communal 'destiny'. pp. Heidegger recognizes the incompatibility of anxiety and dwelling. he points out sardonically. calls this into question. the horror of the void. 'not-being-at-homeness (Un-heimlichkeity . 'anxiety'. For. We invest our being in non-mortal things such as progeny.)
. identifying Unheimlichkeit 'uncanniness' but also. after all. Perhaps Foucault was a genuinely 'post-religious' human being. as we will see. a
8
Hubert Dreyfus has suggested to me that Michel Foucault was both nihilistic and nonevasive about death. Because we cover death over with euphemism or with Woody Allenish humour. lived in spite of and in the face of homelessness. property.

establishes one as ultimately secure in one's world
. 'nothing (comprehensible) to us'. 'empty' or 'negative' nothing. in section 44. the nothing that is. . therefore. no less than early. This. Having liberated himself from metaphysics. that one's self transcends the individual that is the everyday referent of the T (see GA 39. 'breaks through to the Origin'. like every other being. 8. pp. What. it may be noted. however. one in which 'metaphysics . one lives in anxiety. In spite of containing. 102. nihilistic because the 'truth' it discovers is that beyond the intelligible world of beings. then. is the absolute nothing. The work is. 'the abyss' (BT 152). and in spite of setting out to overcome 'forgetfulness of Being'. the mystical. insists that the 'beyond' of beings is 'nothing'. Being and Time is. No longer is it to be thought of as the 'abysmal'. but. in my view. p. . but only in. one understands the difference between the 'ego' and 'the self. In metaphysics. is his own retrospective judgment. 363). the sense of being beyond our ultimate standards of intelligibility. as Heidegger puts it in his discussion of Zen art (see section 18 below)? Late Heidegger. it is understanding that it is not an ontological but rather an epistemological nothing. undoubtedly 'something (etwas)' (GA 15. Overcoming metaphysics is understanding. a work in which Heidegger has not yet liberated himself from metaphysics. 86-8. the account of truth as disclosure that is the ground of all of Heidegger's later thinking. and in anxiety one cannot dwell. one 'stands out' beyond the clearing. that the 'Other' of beings is not an 'absolute' but only a 'relative' nothingness. however. pp. Understanding one's (in Kantian language) 'membership' of the mystical realm of 'plenitude' abolishes anxiety. as Schopenhauer succinctly put it. for all that.132
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work of 'heroic nihilism'. is still dominant' (P p. Why does the transition from the nothing of emptiness to the nothing of 'plenitude' allow one to experience one's world as a place of safety? Because in recognizing that. to be sure 'something completely and utterly Other (Anderes) than beings'. he says. 174). Otherwise put. a 'metaphysical' work. 'nothing' in. the character of this nothing undergoes a radical reassessment. it is to be understood 'positively' as the nothing of 'plenitude'. Rather. GA 4. happens if one breaks out of the cage of metaphysics. 256). It is heroic because it advocates 'living in the truth' about death.

now. one and the same. things to be adored and cared for. Doing this. knowing that one belongs also to the realm of immortality. he says.
. is not 'staring' at an 'empty nothing'. that is to say. These two aspects match. as 'the shrine of the nothing' of plenitude. 151). 249-50)). what Heidegger is looking for when he surveys the panorama of modern art is an art which. 309-10.9 What Heidegger seeks is an art which makes 'dwelling' . the richness of all those concealed (and unintelligible) possibilities of disclosure which. insofar as they 'initiate (geleiterif themselves into 'their own nature . by overcoming 'metaphysics'. . only because. 125). transport and enchantment. is double-aspected: the üre/gHw-experience is a matter of 'Entrückung und Berückung'. of the ultimate 'sacrifice' (GA 9. 'thematizing'. What he is looking for is art which allows us. in which the things in the midst of which we find ourselves are disclosed as holy things. One feels safe. . Heidegger sums all this up in 'Building Dwelling Thinking' and 'The Thing'. further. Dwelling and living within the Ereignis-experience are. GA 54. one can.we are absolutely (unconditionally) 'safe'. I suggest.the personal 'turning' away from metaphysics and out towards the holy . 'the holy'. a place in which. is a matter of grasping that death. in addition to one's ego. by 'founding'. however. that that which surrounds the clearing is no longer abysmal but is. is 'the presenting]' of 'the mystery [the mystical depth] of Being itself (PLT'p. pp. then. one dwells beyond the world. second. Understanding one's transcendence transforms one's world into an unconditionally 'safe' place because one knows that nothing that happens in it can annihilate one's essential self. in one's mortality because. To sum up.first. and. death without negation' (PLT p. 'Mortals dwell'. Rather. 'bringing to presence'.What is dwelling?
133
because one understands.possible. to dwell
9
Heidegger's description of the Ereignis. I believe. we saw (chapter 3 section 19). (being capable. simultaneously. as a 'being-in-the-world'. pp. 'enchantment' is the spell cast over one by things that are holy. one is. being unterrified and unanxious about death. rather. 178). so that there may be a good death' (PLT p. the discussion of Rilke in section 17 below. as individuals. has a gently paradoxical character to it: one can dwell as an ordinary mortal. that is dwells. discloses our world as a holy place. where necessary. being capable of 'the good death'. the two aspects of dwelling: 'transport' is the transcendence that makes one 'safe'. (See.) 9. . . 'face . Dwelling. in the words of Rilke that Heidegger quotes.

The first of Heidegger's arguments. these generalizations are rhetorical exaggerations intended only to identify the rule so as to focus more sharply on the character of the exceptions for which we are looking. Of course. then. is metaphysical. helps prepare an 'abode' for the return of the gods. Heidegger offers two arguments for the (ostensible or formal) conclusion that all Western art is metaphysical.'questions even if they are uttered in the form of assertions'. of course. simultaneously. through art. He manages. act as Scylla and Charybdis with respect to the art for which Heidegger is looking. he writes in the Klee notes (see section 22 below). are the artists that have achieved this? Having raised our hopes with respect to at least some of the art of modernity. a non-metaphysical experience of the world. What these arguments in fact do is to identify two quite distinct kinds of art as the kind of art that is incompatible with dwelling. of course. is 'the essential realm of Western art' (Ister p. I shall suggest.134
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. 'Metaphysics'.which they cannot possibly be since their premises are incompatible with each other. The kind of art he seeks is art which avoids 'supernaturalism' without thereby lapsing into 'naturalism'. therefore. Supernaturalism 10. he says. 'as such'. in 'Art and Space' (p. claims that all Western art is metaphysical in that. best construed as foils andfilters. 18). the 'symbolism' argument I shall call it. I shall call them 'supernaturalistic' and 'naturalistic' art. within the scope of 'Western art' this seems to preclude the possibility that we should ever learn. for the possibility of a world-turning. again without making clear that two versions are involved. however. just like the änti-modern art generalizations with which we began this chapter. I shall suggest. Since modern Western art falls. far from over-
. The situation is further confused by the fact that he presents two versions of the first argument. Heidegger appears immediately to dash them. Dwelling. to confuse the situation by presenting them as if they were the same argument . Western art. 11.and. These two kinds of art. 3) of its remarks about art. as Heidegger says. Who. requires an art that has overcome metaphysics. They are.

that Hölderlin. Yet according to Heidegger. myth. . fairytales. most literally. 'symbolic image' or. This connecting together of 'symbolism' and 'metaphysics' appears in various places but at length in section 3 of the 1942 Ister lectures. 'Hölderlin's hymnal poetry is not concerned with symbols at all' {ibid). the supernatural.). and has understood itself. How. by way of something familiar that can be experienced sensuously' {ibid. could. in the Ist er discussion. . The point. of an 'image' . 18). as essentially concerned with Sinnbilder. his argument claims. and poetry in particular. that is. What is puzzling. has always been understood. In the Ister discussion he says that the term includes legends. however. Heidegger argues that Western art in general. the thing itself.Supernaturalism
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coming or challenging metaphysics it presupposes and confirms it. Even more puzzling is the idea that an authentically non-metaphysical artwork would have to be symbol-free.is to present indirectly something. without. for example. the authorized protocol of a colloquium that took place on 18 May 1958 between Heidegger and the Japanese philosopher Höseki Shindichi Hisamatsu. there would be no purpose to such indirection: one might as well present.) That at least a great deal of Western art has this character is beyond doubt. 16). for example. that is.'symbol'. It turns out. My word 'symbolic' is taken from Heidegger's 'Sinnbild' . metaphor and simile (p. uses the River Ister (Danube) as an image of the poet's journey to 'the Source' where he is to rediscover the 'fire from the heavens'. In all Western art. whom. directly. 'non-sensuous' (p. one might well wonder.
. however. (Were it itself to be 'sensuous'. in other words. poetry survive without symbols. and in 'Denken und Kunst (Thought and Art)' (DK). The reason it does this is that it is 'symbolic'. Heidegger explicitly identifies as standing 'outside metaphysics . is the question of what connection there could possibly be between 'symbolism' and 'metaphysics'. namely. concerned. with 'a proclamation of something else by way of something. that in defining the symbol as that which stands for the 'non-sensuous' Heidegger really means the 'suprasensuous'. 17). and thus outside of the essential realm of Western art' {Ister p. in itself. which is entitled 'The Metaphysical Interpretation of Art'. allegory. that is.something intrinsically sensuous . the use of any imagistic language at all? It seems obvious. the thought must be. 'symbolic picture'. given Heidegger's all-embracing use of the term.

is the distinction between the sensuous and suprasensuous realms the 'decisive drawing' of which was carried out by Plato {Ister p. the question that now needs to be answered is why the fact that an artwork is concerned to symbolize (and thereby 'thematize') a supernatural domain. In the later critique of 'symbolic' art in 'Art and Thought'.but the supernaturalist art of traditional Christianity. pp. why the fact that its raison d'etre is the exposition and reinforcement of the 'simple and essential' truths of traditional Christianity. as already remarked. But in the earlier Ister critique. . . The ground. symbolize perfectly natural phenomena such as human faith. he reverts to using the term in the (or at least a) thoroughly traditional. highly idiosyncratic sense. which Heidegger takes to be simply the form in which Platonism became the dominant outlook of medieval Europe: the 'framework' within which the symbols of Western art 'have their ground'.
. he also uses 'metaphysics' to mean 'enlightenment'. Once this is understood it becomes clear that the real target of the symbolism argument is not symbolism in general . since. charity and love . the 'metaphysical': 'since Plato.g. Here we confront one of Heidegger's extremely unhelpful ambiguities with respect to crucial terminology. positivism. all Western conceptions and interpretations of the world [e. given for the 'metaphysical' character of symbolic art in the Ister discussion is that its topic is the suprasensuous. for the moment. as we found out in chapter 1 (section 7). more specifically. by art] have been metaphysical' because 'in
10
Actually at least three. in spite of the fact that he has already forged and deployed his own idiosyncratic meaning {GA 52. says Heidegger. For the fact is that he uses the term 'metaphysics' in at least two10 quite different senses. the dubiousness of the claim that all (post-classical) Western art has been Christian art. 12. for that which is also named the spiritual' {Ister p. . 17). in other words. exists for the . 17).136
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'what is sensuous about the artwork . rationalism. symbolic of a supernatural realm. So the real claim is that the mainstream of Western art is not just symbolic but. he uses the term 'metaphysics' in his own. hope.one may. scientism. non-idiosyncratic way. should render it a 'metaphysical' artwork. that is to say. Leaving aside. . after all. 178-80). suprasensuous.

Supernaturalism
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relation to the physical the suprasensuous realm is the metaphysical' {Ister p. What is the connection between 'objectification' and 'metaphysics'?
. something which. given up and thereby "lost"' {Ister p. then. however. Heidegger has. preliminary stage to the eternal' and therefore 'something to be surpassed. its 'supreme danger' (QCTp.'metaphysics'. that such art is 'metaphysical' in the sense of the term in which he identifies 'metaphysics'. is the study of the meta-physical . Heidegger's later critique. the focus of the later objection to Christian art. 213-14). the reason that the art of Sinnbilder is something 'metaphysical' which needs to be 'overcome' is that. Not then the meta-physical but rather the 'objectual' character of that which it thematizes is. from the point of view of understanding. at them. Since it is art which interprets the 'earthly realm' of human life as 'a transitory. The problem of modernity is not meta-physics but rather 'metaphysics' in the unique sense that is defined in terms of Heidegger's philosophy of Being and truth. According to this. 26). the kind of art we need now. the Ister critique of supernaturalist art is uninteresting. to quote his line more fully. in this natural . This is the use of 'metaphysical' that is standard among the nineteenth-century German Idealists . as the problem of modernity. It follows that. For Heidegger dwelling is the human essence. as the ground of its 'destitution'. that 'poetically man dwells on this earth? (my emphasis). Dwelling as understood by Heidegger-Hölderlin. we realize here and now. which is of a very different character. 17).and is quite different from his own idiosyncratic use. As formulated in the Ister discussion. his objection is not. by way of a contrast. 30). as 'symbolic'. Hölderlin says. Since we live in a post-Christian age our art has already overcome the meta-physical so that we do not need to search for a new and exceptional kind of art in order to do so.world. however. is impossible from within the meta-physical interpretation of world. it is concerned to 'bring forth' something 'objectual {gegenständlich)' {DK pp. it represents dwelling not as a human. Not so. Given this it is easy to see why he looks unfavourably on the 'meta-physical' character of Christian art. but only as a post-human possibility. dwelling as a human being 'on this earth'. if we live properly. 13. good grounds for rejecting the art of Christian meta-physics. it seems.

and that his objections to it are identical with his objections to onto-theology What are these objections? Heidegger says that (at least in the religious context) onto-theology arises out of a 'quail[ing]' before the phenomenon of 'unconcealment'. p. out of a 'misinterpretation]' of disclosure (gCTp. The God of Christian theology became assimilated to the 'God' of Greek onto-theology Given this understanding of medieval Christianity. Then. the grasped and conceptually tamed solution to an intellectual problem. 3Iff. however. when God becomes 'the God of the [onto-theologically minded Greek] philosophers'. acquired the character it did because it 't[ook] possession of Greek philosophy' (P p. seeking to give voice to that sense yet lacking the capacity (or spiritual courage) for 'poetic thinking'. the 'wonderful adaptation of ends to means'. as an end in itself but rather as the basis for an inference to a being of a different ontological order. propaganda on behalf of the worldview of medieval theology. Its concern has always been to establish the overall character of the manifest world. The result is that the concealed ground of the world becomes thought of as its very powerful 'efficient cause'. ceases to be 'the ungraspable' and becomes instead. In this way the relation between the 'concealed and the unconcealed' becomes 'define[d] . One senses that disclosure is also concealment. (So.138
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Heidegger claims that since early Greek times philosophy has always been what he calls 'onto-theology' (ID pp. of the 'being of beings' ('ontology').) Christian theology. one attempts to capture it in terms of a 'representational thinking' which presents everything in terms of a 'cause-effect coherence'. 288). not. 26). however. the thought presents itself that in his later critique of symbolic art Heidegger thinks of it as. however. the organic character of the 'being of beings' observed throughout the natural order might serve to ground the inference to a powerful and benevolent God as nature's ultimate ground. . Heidegger claims. 287ff. this conceptual vulgarity comes into play. in terms of the causality of making'. a 'highest being' understood as being of such a nature as to provide the ultimate explanation for the manifest character of beings ('theology'). he loses the 'mysteriousness of distance'. When. 300ff). . Since mystery is the element in which alone the holy
. essentially. P pp. senses the awesomeness of 'truth'. ceases to be located beyond the limits of intelligibility.. for example.

to conceptually picture 'the mystery'. rather. but 'metaphysics'. 26). since otherwise he could not have represented the art of the cathedral as 'great' art in the sense established by the Greek paradigm. not as serious art-historical theses but as. viewed in the light of my working hypothesis that Heidegger's characterizations of supernaturalistic and naturalistic art are really intended. by turning it into something 'objectual'. will thematize the Other of manifest beings without falling into
. When the world ceases to be holy the 'festive mood'. as I call it. by trying to capture. ceases to be a holy place. 'Before the causa suf. the character of the authentically non-metaphysical art for which he is looking. By misinterpreting the Other of beings as another being. play music and dance. For as remarked in chapter 1 (section 25). medieval art (and so medieval life) is full of the golden mystery of the divinely Other. What emerges is that the art for which we are looking will thematize the 'other side' of world without turning it into a 'highest' member of the world. 26). (Without such a light it would have to be accounted as failing to satisfy the 'earth' condition. in Heidegger's own unique sense. lose[s] all that is exalted and holy' (QCTp.) Nonetheless. not merely meta-physics. as grasped in medieval theology. But in the Middle Ages one did pray. as the hidden. 'man can neither fall on his knees in reverence. 14. nor play music nor dance5 (ID p. the consequence of this is that 'God . medieval theology effects the abolition of the Other of beings and hence becomes.Supernaturalism
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is to be found. by contrast. to represent. by reaching for Greek philosophy to articulate its sense of the awesomeness of truth. ceases to be a place of dwelling. caricatures designed to make it easier to identify. Heidegger himself is perfectly well aware of this. In short. the God of onto-theology. To represent the God of Christian onto-theology as the God of the Middle Ages as a whole is a travesty of the epoch. Equally it is a travesty to represent medieval art as mere propaganda on behalf of onto-theology. . And when inhabiting another line of thinking. . The result is the disenchantment of the cosmos. for representational thinking. World. disappears. as Heidegger puts it. something of importance emerges from his later discussion of 'symbolic' art. supernatural cause of natural beings. representational thinking destroys what it seeks to honour.

is that all Western art is 'representational'.140
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the self-defeating trap of turning it into another. though the externals of Christian symbolism are retained. What this means is that the art which overcomes metaphysics will be a thematizing that is not a representing. 213). it is not surprising that Heidegger.
. supernatural meaning has been replaced by humanistic content . For as soon as 'representational thinking' comes into play . Given these historical limitations to its scope. quite different line of reasoning which I shall call the 'representation' argument. the claim that its 'symbolic' character renders it 'metaphysical'. 'realism' (OWL p. 17). 67). a travesty of that of Western art which really is 'symbolic'. 'mimesis'.diametrically opposed to the premiss of the symbolism argument . buttresses his critique of Western art with a second. 'representation (Darstellung)9 (DK p. however. The premiss of this argument .that which is thematized becomes 'reified' into a being (DTp. It is. Hence. The art for which we are looking will be art which allows 'the enigma' to come to presence 'as the enigma' (Ister p. 35) and will not transform the unknown and unknowable into the natured and the known.nearly all the art of the twentieth century. the symbolism argument is completely irrelevant to Western art created after the 'death' of the world of Christian supernaturalism. is that whatever the merits or otherwise of its critique of supernaturalism.most of the art of the Italian Renaissance . I observed. How this difficult idea of a bringing to presence that is not a representing is to be understood we will see Heidegger trying to elucidate in his discussion of the individual artists of modernity he believes to be authentic 'founders of the holy'. an oblivion of the Other of beings and hence of Being. Heidegger concludes.thinking that is limited to and confined within a horizon that articulates reality into an intelligible world of beings . without making clear that this is what he is doing. Naturalism 15. occult being.and to art in which those externals are not even nominally present . It is irrelevant to that art in which. An even more glaring fault. Treated as a serious account of Western art. it is essentially metaphysical. 'Other-excluding' is. in its 'essence'.

the two arguments are thus best seen as historically complementary The 'symbolism' argument is supposed to bear on traditional. it is important to notice that the horizon of beings beyond which. eidos.Naturalism
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Before trying to grasp whatever plausibility there might be here. post-supernaturalist art. transfigures. of course. Heidegger needs to dispose of the idea that great art is great in virtue of accuracy of representation.that he makes the move from the Van Gogh to the Greek temple: 'where and how'. But we know already that the latter claim is not really intended as a universal truth. In the tradition this is generally put. But he recognizes that the defender of the view that the point of art is representation. accurately captures its nature: 'European art is in its essence distinguished by the character of representation (Darstellung). have traditionally accounted for the difference by saying that art perfects objects: it essentializes. he muses. the art. 213). he asks sardonically. the 'representation' argument on post. Heidegger recognizes. idealizes them. making visible' (DK p. can make the move to 'ideas'. conspicuously Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. 'sensuous'. authentically Christian art.e. should a Greek temple agree? Who could maintain the impossible view that the Idea of Temple is represented in the building?' {PUT p. by saying that what art represents is the (Platonic) eidos. It applies to post-Christian. Since mimesis can only be of perceptible. Heidegger believes. GA 4. beings. It is in order to demolish such Schopenhauerian Platonism . This refinement of the idea that Western art is pure mimesis. Though Heidegger gives no help in sorting things this way. that it does not simply hold a mirror up to nature (see GA 52. if Heidegger is right about it. p. Theorists of Western art. pp. is a horizon. of pure 'naturalism'. the 'idea' or 'form' of objects. Of course. the Van Gogh is a 'reproduction of the thing's general essence'. of natural beings. beautifies. 'representational' art acknowledges no Other. so that artworks are able to agree with [i. en route to his own account of the artwork as disclosing a world.as at least a universal account of the nature of art . 134-44). as it is put by Heidegger. 'is this general essence. He dismisses as obviously absurd the idea that the greatness of the Van Gogh shoes consists in 'successfully' depicting 'a pair of actually existing peasant shoes'. exclusively. that representational Western art is not exactly the same as (mundane) photography. 178.11 But whether art takes its essential task to be the
11
In 'The Origin'. Perhaps.
. 37). represent] it? With what nature of what thing. as I shall say. if an artwork is essentially mimesis it cannot be about a supernatural world.or non-Christian art. Representation. The effective scope of the 'representation' argument is thus quite different from that of the 'symbolism' argument. that architecture is a pretty good counter-example to Schopenhauerianism makes it an equally good counter-example to his own later claim about the 'essence' of 'European art'.

The art of the modern paradigm will be art which steers between the Scylla of naturalism and the Charybdis of supernaturalism. There are others . organic unity. accepts and reinforces that understanding of reality which is the metaphysics of naturalism. examples of an art which is neither 'symbolic' nor 'representational'. for example . that this Other of riatural beings is transformed into another. Putting the two foils together. with objects 'as we would like them to be' as he quotes Klee as saying (see section 22 below) dovetails together with the earlier analysis of Western art as having been progressively taken over by 'aesthetics'. Trakl and Stefan George. clearly. balance. what we learn is the following. the motive for the straightening out of imperfections of harmony. case studies: cases where Heidegger believes himself to have discovered genuine examples of the modem paradigm. The idea that all modern Western art is either a slavish imitation of nature or else an air-brushed version of such imitation designed to produce pleasant.but these are the ones which strike me as the most significant. the art of the modern paradigm will be art in which something other than natural beings comes to presence. as it were. economy. and so on.142
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representation of idealized or non-idealized objects makes no essential difference. however. As I suggested. I proceed now to four. rather than challenging. pleasant feelings. East Asia. in the beholder. supernatural being. to highlight the character of the antimetaphysical art for which Heidegger is looking. the representation argument is best understood as a contrast or foil designed. as happens in 'symbolic' art. The case studies I shall discuss concern the art of Rilke. As Heidegger sees it.12 16. As a seriously intended account of the universal character of postChristian art the representation argument is. no more successful than the symbolism argument's account of Christian art.
12
Notice that the account of Western art as essentially concerned with the eidos of objects. in tandem with its partner. is thematized. 'aesthetic' sensations is no more plausible than the idea that all medieval art is mere propaganda on behalf of the claustrophobic outlook of scholastic theology. Cezanne and of Klee. the motive for making everyone look like Julia Roberts. is to produce. 'experiences of the beautiful'. Unlike 'representational' art. without its being the case.
.the studies of Hebel. therefore. In either case the art in question. like the symbolism argument. presumably.

in other words. rightly rejects the metaphysics of scientific naturalism. In fact. There is. It is 'the irrational'. Yet by simply elevating the 'irrational' ('unconscious') over the 'rational' ('conscious') he goes about the revolt against scientism in the wrong way. however. for example. but by
. not just the 'nature' of science and common sense. a metaphysics according to which the way the world is. is simply the obverse of rationalism. as Heidegger understands him. Heidegger had. They understand. is disclosed. as Being and Time puts it. complaining in the Ist er lectures about the 'thoughtless lumping together of my thinking with Rilke's [which] has already become a cliche'. Rilke. Rilke's 'open' is really that 'fateful modern and metaphysical concept of "the unconscious"' which is simply a kind of waste bag for whatever will not fit into 'consciousness (ratio)'. as we have seen (chapter 1 section 17). Heidegger's critique seems to suggest. his own and Rilke's modes of thinking. by the idea that the (one and only) way reality is. he claims. by 1942. 91-2). Heidegger had always been interested in Rilke. 'a domain [which] remains the preserve of feeling and instinct' (Ister pp. had an important influence on The Origin'. is the way that is revealed by science and by sound common sense. but.critical. Irrationalism. become sharply. gripped by the metaphysics of naturalism. as part of a human pathology.Rilke
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Rilke 17. Heidegger stresses in many places. not by reason. They are. the 'rationalist'. are 'completely opposite'. in particular their use of the phrase 'the open'. and only to. 70). People posit the unconscious. which assails us and enthralls us as landscape' (BTp. in the grips of the idea that Being (reality) is disclosed to. 'irrational'. To accommodate this. 'reason'. Though well-disposed to Rilke during that period. posits 'the unconscious' as the 'domain of feeling and instinct' and views the poet's nature as the unconscious projection of 'subjective colouring' on to what is really there. ways. The irrationalist does not escape the metaphysical character of scientific naturalism but simply replaces it with his own metaphysics. tarred with the same faults. He is the only artist to receive a more than passing reference during the period of Being and Time and. 'the nature which 'stirs and strives'. that human beings often experience reality in other.

is. (In practice. offering a poetic metaphor of his experience of Being. non-metaphysical currents are present in Rilke's 'valid' (PLTp. the: 'will' (PLTpp.flingsus 'ventured ones' out into existence yet at the same time holds us in a 'gravitational pull' towards itself as the 'centre' (PLTp. therefore. as Heidegger expounds him. In his best work.144
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'feeling and instinct'. he says. 115-16). by the time he came to write 'What Are Poets For?' to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the poet's death. a poet of great significance 'for needy times'. In his best work. 96) poetry. The seeds of the danger lie in the fact that (unlike the animals) we 'represent'. his entanglement in metaphysics is a 'tempered' one (PLTp. however. he now sees the merit of Rilke's usage. Heidegger had considerably moderated his dismissal of Rilke as someone hopelessly ensnared by metaphysics. as we are about to see. the Leibnizian-Nietzschean metaphysics of 'will'. as Heidegger said in 1942. 'The venture'. 'the Open'. or at least points the way towards.) By 1946. that is to say. 104). 108). Rilke achieves. different. 154). 'no being without a boundary'. but rather 'the venture' and. not 'the will'. 60). the sine qua nonn of beinghood. this leads to a metaphysics in which the key term is no longer 'matter' but rather 'will'. Since a 'bounding' is when a being 'begins its presenting' (PLT p. the opposite of his own use of 'the open' as a synonym for 'the clearing'. 'Being'. a non-metaphysical experience of Being and is. even better. in the 'shadow' of German metaphysics. the 'Urgrund9. cut off by the metaphysics of naturalism.
. the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing. at least officially. Rilke calls the Urgrund. however. 'Objectification' as such. For Rilke. the 'primordial ground' of beings. In spite. says Rilke. the expression points towards a non-metaphysical experience of Being. Though this is indeed. 101-2) out of which 'truth' appears (PLTp. that Rilke thinks of Being as unbounded suggests that it is conceived in a non-entifying way. conceptualize the world into objects (PLT pp. as the Greeks recognized. Though the poet indeed stands. V Quine's 'no entity without identity'). however (in other words. our gift for the
13
'A boundary is not that at which something stops [as if a thing could be recognized as the thing it is independently of establishing its boundary] but. The 'danger' to human beings is that they will become completely insensible to 'the Open' and its 'pull'.' In a slogan (which says the same as W. that is. 105) (the Dionysian). sees that since what 'Open' most naturally means is 'the unbounded' (PLT p. of the use of sometimes inappropriate language.

too. The absolute. in illusion. even into courageous governance of the towns. as happens in the age in which things show up as and only as resource. The singular onslaught of death he can by noflightever prevent. Life is riddled with anxiety on account of our 'unshieldedness'.14 invest in non-mortal things like progeny. an impenetrable curtain between us and the Open. The covert (and. the attempt to overcome death. 121) in the face of death. Franz Kafka.Rilke
145
Apollonian'). 'earth' (see chapter 3 section 4. And it exists. In our enframed world the Open has become completely 'invisible'.) When. irrational) motive of all action. thinks of it as a flat. And he has pondered how to flee exposure to the arrows of unpropitious weather and its frosts. to. is not itself the danger. our lack of 'securedness' (PLT p. 108). We take out health insurance. IM p. 124) it resembles the child who. Everywhere venturing forth underway. experienceless without any way out he comes to nothing. was. capable of being 'transparent' to the Open. however. an insurance broker and theoretician of actuarial risk.
. is the quest for absolute security. says Rilke. is the obstruction of the Open a condition of 'destitution'? Modern life is. (Ister p. This is the condition of the present age. in other language. a constant 'negation of death' (PLT p. unconditional
14
15
It is worth noting that the master poet of anxiety.15 Security cannot be achieved by taking measures of 'protection' (ibid). then objects become completely 'opaque' (PLT p. The quest is. Why. Rilke's contemporary and fellow native of Prague. even if in the face of dire infirmity he achieves most skillful avoidance. For so long as we retain the 'festive' mode of disclosure objects remain. In its metaphysical insensibility to the 'other side' of the 'globe of Being5 (PLT p. in the quest to escape anxiety. for Rilke-Heidegger. Heidegger quotes and requotes Sophocles on this tragic point: And into the sounding of the word and swift understanding of all he has found his way. of course. for us. Modern humanity thus exists in the 'destitution' of oblivion to the gravitational pull of the 'Other'. the festive moodfinallyand completely abandons us. in professional life. illuminated disk. 127). futile. property and reputation. the quest for a final 'safety'. we engage in the death-evading strategies detailed in Being and Time. 59. 147). oblivious of the dark side of the moon. of course. as Rilke sees it.

our satisfying the second condition. which does not even need the spaciousness of the universe to be within itself almost
. 124—5)
Understanding that. to-be-cared-for. 124). by allowing us to experience Being as. bees which 'ceaselessly gather the honey of the visible. when it comes to 'dwelling'. Heidegger adds. As Hölderlin. of course. offers us the 'poetic' experience of Being which allows a genuine overcoming of anxiety about death.the latter of 'unfathomable' proportions17 . Heidegger quotes Rilke as suggesting that however vast the world of space and time may be. But he facilitates. gripped by metaphysics. The reason for our anxiety in the face of death. like the lighted side of the moon. 'the globe of all beings as a whole' (PLTp. as Rilke himself puts it. 220) . with the depth dimensions of our inwardness. himself) as 'bees of the invisible'. understanding the 'other side' of beings not as an emptiness but rather a 'plenitude' of all the. it is something entirely different. teaches us qnce more to see the unseen. 130). things. (PLT pp. to store it up in the sweet golden beehive of the Invisible' (PLT p. the condition that our world should become a world of sacred. we think of the 'side of life that is averted from us' as something entirely 'negative'. possessed of both a visible and invisible 'dimension' (PLT p. is that. sees.146
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security that we seek can only be achieved 'outside all caring' {ibid). 'full of merit. outside all practical calculation and measure-taking. 125).the poet is. to sense the dark side of the 'globe of Being'. like an iceberg. but poetically man dwells': though man indeed deserves great credit for his practical achievements. 'empty'. to stand out of the visible and into its 'other side'. to us. to unconditional security. which grants it to him. as we know. too. For by allowing us to experience it as. the reason we cannot 'read the word 'death' without negation' (PLT p.
within the widest orbit of the sphere of beings there are regions and places which seem to be negative but are nothing of the kind if we think of all things as being within the widest orbit of beings. allows us to face death without anxiety.16 In this way he brings us to see that . Rilke. however. it hardly bears comparison with the dimensions. the 'poetic'. then. the disclosure of an immense concealment. by allowing us to become 'ecstatic'. unknowable 'facets' of beings (ibid). Rilke. who describes poets (inter alios. the 'angel'
16 17
'That is'. too. the first of the two conditions of 'dwelling'.

the Western art tradition. To me it seems more and more as though our customary consciousness lives on the tip of a pyramid whose base within us (and in a certain way beneath us) widens out so fully that the farther we find ourselves able to descend into it. does not. reservations. 213) . take representation to be its central task. 'East Asian' art on the other hand. . It takes the representation of (idealized) nature to be its central task. better. 138)~who sings into being the 'haleness' and 'wholeness of the 'globe of Being' and thereby the 'holy' (PLTp. According to Heidegger. The primary records of Heidegger's encounter with Eastern art are the authorized protocol of the 1958 discussion between Heidegger and the Japanese philosopher and Zen-master Hoseki Hisamatsu. worldly existence. I think. in the widest sense. and A Dialogue on Language'. This latter work. as we have seen (section 15 above). at least. There is a sense here. 'Western art'.or.East Asian art
5
147
(PLTp. to one of his accounts. the more generally we seem to merge into those things. As such he allows us to dwell in a 'safe' and holy place and is. however.it does not. which are given in our earthly. for which reason Heidegger says that we must not 'press' it very far (PLT p. 141) (Heidegger puns here on the various meanings of 'Heil'). 1-54). subtitled 'Between a Japanese and an Inquirer' (OWL pp. Not just by the language but also by the imagery. Tezuka Tomio. 128-9)
. East Asian art 18. truely. remain. in their independence of space and time. Rilke's image of Being as a 'globe' possessing a lit and unlit 'side' is not really all that appropriate to the unboundedness of 'the Open'. 'a poet for needy times'. as we have seen. mimesis. has. None of these reservations. (PLT pp. In spite of the positive character of Heidegger's 1946 appraisal of Rillce. 'pictorial' (bildhaft) (DKp. therefore (the question Heidegger poses at the beginning of the essay). For all its virtues. as its essence. that what is encountered is art of a still higher order than is encountered in Rilke.
unfathomable . according. as Heidegger understands it. While it is indeed representational . was loosely based on a visit paid to Heidegger in 1954 by the Japanese scholar of German literature. 124). Anti-metaphysical thought and experience is present but partially obscured by the language of metaphysics. . it seems. 'Thought and Art' (DK). are present in his discussion of East Asian art.

The beauty of an artwork lies.). In 'The Question of Being' he performs this act of abandonment by writing 'Sein' with a crossing-out through it . since the latter term 'belongs. to the patrimony of metaphysics' (ibid.). The aim of this meditation is to achieve a kind of freedom. is 'no symbol (Symbol). is an impediment for him. According to the Japanese concept of Gei-do. 'Ku' is almost certainly a better word than 'Being'.). 'peace' .$fe& {P p. later Heidegger holds. 'the Nothing'.148
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Heidegger's encounter with Eastern art is largely an encounter with Japanese and. he suggests. 213). that is. 212). 'stillness'. adhere to this self-denying ordinance. Its point. There is nothing 'nihilistic' about it (OWL p.though he does not. in fact. an origin understood as 'the Nothing' (DKp. for Zen. then. one would abandon this fraught term completely for something free of metaphysical baggage. Zen art. It is in this light that his account of the essence of Eastern art is to be understood. in particular. no symbolic image (Sinnbild)' (DK p. 'the Open' (in Rilke s sense). says Hisamatsu. in Hisamatsu's formulation. 'the empty5. But when he has broken through
18
Traditional philosophy has aways taken 'Being' as its fundamental topic. it is the 'loftiest name' for what Heidegger 'means to say with the word "Being"'. somehow. however. 'freedom (Ledigsein) from all forms of bondage' (ibid. In fact. 19). Rather.ls The point of a Zen artwork concerns. 'art is a way (Weg) in which man breaks through to the Origin (Ursprung)9 (ibid. in the fact that. to facilitate. 'the formless'. the formless comes to presence (Anwesung) in the pictorial. Without this presence of the formless itself in the formed. to be. a Zen artwork is impossible.Heidegger's various attempts to translate the Japanese word 'Ku\ But this is not a 'negative nothing' (DKp.
. a form of meditation. in the language of 'The Origin of the Work of Art'. Janus-faced: As long as man finds himself on the way to the Origin (Ursprung). 213). as 'silence'. Rather. (DKp. is it possible for 'earth' to 'rise up' through 'world'?) The pictorial is. as the presentation of the pictorial. 310) . as. the Other of manifest beings. after all. sat. is not to symbolize an occult 'highest being': the artwork 'brings forth nothing objectual (gegenständlich)'. Rather than reporting on the state of nature the point of Eastern art is. But because the 'metaphysical' misunderstanding of Being is endemic in the tradition ideally. 214) How is this presence of 'the Nothing' in the pictorial possible? How is it possible to experience 'the Origin' as present in manifest things? (How.

of the world. 213)
Attuned to Hisamatsu's thinking. (DK p.East Asian art
149
to the Origin then the making visible of the eidetic (des Eidetischen) is no longer an impediment. The pictorial. in this case. a fact which demands
19
Kurosawa. but rather to the traditional No play. Since all photography 'forces the world into the sphere of . the drawn (Gezeichnete). an occasion for the movement of self to Origin' (ibid. prevents objects becoming.
. What is of significance here is that the stage is entirely empty.are incompatible' (OWL pp. What determines it to be one or the other? Though many Westerners think to experience the charms of the Japanese world in Kurosawa's famous film Rashomon. The pictorial can. Americanization]' (Hollywoodization). This is not peculiar to. . For the film is characterized by a pervasive 'realism'. But it can also be the opposite. it is then the appearing of the primary (ursprünglich) truth itself. Throne of Blood on Macbeth. indeed of all photography. is. as one might put it. 'if you will. . literature. film and photography in general. . who had studied Western painting.Kurosawa's film. the character of all film. Heidegger repeats the point in his own way and out of his own experience: The written. be an impediment to the 'breakthrough to the Origin'. is not only an impediment (Hinderung) but also a freeing-from-impediment (Ent-hinderung). and Ran on King Lear. Kurosawa. The Nothing never happens in Hollywood. It blocks thematization of anything other than beings. then.19 an example of the 'allconsuming Europeanization' or. For the character of Rashomon is. not to Kurosawa's film. In a word . . in the objectness of photography'. in fact. claims Heidegger. 16-17). It is purely representational. the film. objectification'. and political philosophy. windows on to the 'Other'. in fact. metaphysical. 'the Eastern world and the technical-aesthetic product of thefilm-industry. is not merely a possible 'impediment to the breakthrough to the Origin' but an actual and absolute one. by naturalism: the 'massiveness of presentation' means that 'the Japanese world is captured and imprisoned .Rilke's word .). He never pretended otherwise than that hisfilmswere cultural hybrids. is 'opaque'. or the fault of. If one wishes to encounter authentic Japanese art. quite un-Japanese. one should turn. based Yojimbo on a Dashiell Hammett novel.

in the mid-1950s. a matter to which I shall return shortly. the ever-increasing reverence for 'special effects' . Heidegger is now prepared to allow authentic Japanese art to be an art for our (Western) needy times. the region around Aix-en-Provence. Film. The relationship became personal and intense when he began to visit Cezanne's homeland. to experience the presencing of the non-metaphysical 'Other' of world. Rilke had been Rodin's secretary in Paris and had viewed with wonder and astonishment the major 1904 exhibition of Cezanne's work. he came to regard as his 'second homeland' (E p.and. 18). since a marked trend in recent times has surely been what one might call the Spielbergization of film. a region. because it cannot avoid providing a denseness of naturalistic detail. through acclimatizing ourselves to the reception of Japanese art. The point to be noticed here. Heidegger was probably led to Cezanne thorough his reading of Rilke's Letters on Cezanne21 during the preparation of the 1946 Rilke lecture 'What Are Poets For?' Shortly after that he saw several Cezannes in the Basel art gallery. according to Francois Fedier. exactly. in contrast to earlier dismissals of the value of Eastern art and thought to the West (BT 178). In the right conjunction of circumstances. has fairly clearly gone wrong in these insightful20 yet exaggerated dismissals of film as an art form. We Westerners may be able. It is hard to resist the thought that Heidegger's love of Hölderlin and his 'Remembrance' of the Dordogne was a preparation for his later love of Provence and of Cezanne. the play allows 'the Nothing'. the slightest gestures on the actor's part 'cause mighty things to appear out of a strange stillness'. correspondingly. on the other hand.22 Heidegger is reported to have said.
. inter alia. the ever-increasing emptiness of mainstream film. is the point here? What is the point of the contrast between film and No play? It seems to be a rather straightforward one. however. is that. For example. cannot allow anything but objects to presence. learn to dwell.150
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'uncommon concentration' from the audience. Something. What. that Cezanne's path is 'the
20
21
22
And prescient. Cezanne 19. 'the empty'. Thanks to this. including 'Mont Sainte-Victoire seen from the Colline des Larves' (1904-6) (plate 3). 83). by slowly raising the open hand to eyebrow level the actor causes a mountain landscape to appear {OWL p. through this experience. to presence because emptiness is literally present: the stage is empty. and. I think.

Philosophisches Jahrbuch 94. 1987. 103-18. 33-44. perhaps. from beginning to end. c.
. see especially pp. 62-78 and in his important Kunst als Enteignis (Bonn: Bouvier. Kunst & Museumjournal 2/1. my own path as a thinker responds (corresponds) in its own way'. 1990. 'These days in Cezanne's homeland are worth more than a whole library of philosophy books. The Gardener Vallier.
path to which. 1996). 1906. Heidegger is reported to have described Mont Sainte-Victorie as Cezanne's 'wondrous
23
These anecdotes are conveniently collected together in Christoph Jamme's excellent 'The Loss of Things: Cezanne-Rilke-Heidegger'. And. the title of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. If only one could think as directly as Cezanne painted. Excellent work analysing the relation between Heidegger and Cezanne is carried out in this article and also in Gunter Seubold's 'Der Pfad ins Selbe'.Cezanne
151
Plate 2 Paul Cezanne.' These and other anecdotes23 (half-remembering. pp. pp. at the end of one of his visits to Provence.

First. verwandelt in eine geheimnisvolle Identität. Unlike the case of Rilke. The sole text on the basis of which we must attempt to understand him is a poem (or. Zeigt sich hier ein Pfad. as Heidegger called it) inspired by one of Cezanne's final works. more exactly. the personal ideal of 'Gelassenheit' . which leads to a belonging-together of poetry and thought?) (D p. a portrait of his gardener (plate 2). is not apathy but rather an 'urgent' readiness for action. 'equanimity'.'serenity'. Is a path revealed here. In the late work of the painter the twofoldness of what is present and of presence has become one. the 'small-is-beautiful' theme.here explained as a 'stillness'. somehow. however. Im Spätwerk des Malers ist die Zwiefalt von Anwesendem und Anwesenheit einfältig geworden 'realisiert' und verwunden zugleich. 163)
Various important late-Heideggerian themes are present here. make it clear what it was about the painter that he valued so highly or how he took him to be a model for thinking.152
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mountain') make it clear that Heidegger admired Cezanne greatly and regarded him as. 'dwelling' . der Unscheinbares pflegte am chemin des Lauves. however. das inständig Stille der Gestalt des alten Gärtners Vallier. who tends the inconspicuous on the Chemin des Lauves. They do not. the importance of the 'inconspicuous'. Second. of 'fostering the growth of the saving power'. transformed into a mystery-filled identity. The poem reads:
Cezanne Das nachdenksam Gelassene. 'realized' and overcome at the same time. der ein Zusammengehören des Dichtens und des Denkens führt? (The thoughtfully serene. 'thing thought'. a model for thinking. Heidegger wrote no major essay articulating what it was he found to be of such significance in Cezanne. the urgent stillness of the form of the old gardener Vallier. 'Gedachte'. one might almost add. 'releasement' or. not by attempting
. which.

confronts us with three central ideas. however. in 'little things' (QCTp. is the second verse. p.that is.in such a way. transformed into a 'radiant'. The following quotation appears in Seubold's Kunst als Enteignis. that it is simultaneously overcome. but rather preserving and enhancing. and because he has overcome the dualism that he embodies the unity of poetry and thought. that the duality {Zwiefalt) of the two is overcome in the oneness {Einfalt) of the pure radiance of his paintings. of all. The task. the gardener is the poet-thinker. mystery-filled.
. is. that these two features together constitute an overcoming of 'the ontological difference'. indeed. First. that on which we dwell.
Taking these texts together.of not mastering and exploiting the earth in the manner of Gestell. second. 'oneness'. 'presence' (see
24
This was privately circulated as a Christmas gift to a few friends in 1975. caring for.
What Cezanne called 'la relisatiort is the appearance of what is present {des Anwesenden) in the clearing of presence {des Anwesens) .Cezanne
153
grandiose. by way of explaining this idea. but in. the second verse of the poem and the explanatory comment. For thinking. the intimate and personal sphere of action. 20. I suggest. made manifest. that is. I shall begin by discussing the last of these ideas. 107. then. because he has overcome the dualism that he is a gardener rather than exploiter of the world. This is the poem's heart. the 'tender of the inconspicuous' at the hut in Todtnauberg. since it is because he has realized and overcome the dualism that the gardener has achieved Gelassenheit. Heidegger himself. rather. Why. this is the question of overcoming the ontological difference between being and beings. world-historical action. In a so-called 'later version' of the poem produced in 1974. is 'the ontological difference between being and beings' something that needs to be 'overcome'? That there is a radical difference between being . third. Third. and. that in Cezanne's late works the duality of 'presence' and 'what is present' is 'realized'. The heart of the poem. is to try to understand the dualism and its overcoming. the importance of gardening .24 Heidegger adds the following comment. 33). As I read Heidegger's imaginative recreation of the painting. one might say. not by enlisting the aid of the 'state-founder' in the building of a 'temple of modernity'. the mysterious talk of 'realizing' and 'overcoming' the dualism between 'presence' and 'what is present'. first.

'the step back out of metaphysics' (ID p. then. a difference between entities (beings). metaphysics mistakes what is. What is in reality the horizon of disclosure in terms of which reality makes itself intelligible to us is transformed into the eternally fixed structure preserved by (other) beings in their coming and going. Heidegger compares the relation between being and beings to that between a visual field and its contents (DTp. we saw in section 2 above. In Identity and Difference Heidegger says that what is needed for the overcoming of metaphysics is 'the step back'. rather. a fundamental Heideggerian insight: being is not a being.154
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also BTp. For this is precisely to deny the difference between beings. 299) . 53-4). the humanity-dependent structure of disclosure for the humanity-independent structure of reality itself. It is to turn being into a being. 18) .and beings . of overcoming metaphysics is the task of overcoming the ontological difference. is a relation between beings and a non-being. is to construe the difference as an ontological difference. This suggests that the source of metaphysics lies in being. that 'truth' or horizon of disclosure which reftders beings possible and 'legislates' (P p. misses the projected character of being. of allowing it to become just 'the difference' (ID pp. however. is precisely what metaphysics does. of course. 300) the kinds of beings they can be. 'too close up' to things. then (to use an analogy that was already a cliche by the time Schopenhauer came to expound Kant but is
.'what is present' (see also P p. and only then does the world appear in its holy 'mystery'. Imagine. in fact. Thus the beings-being relation which. To deny the difference between being and beings would thus be as absurd as denying the difference between the visual field and its contents. the fact of its dependence on those intelligibility-creating 'forms of life' in which human beings find themselves and become the human beings that they are. 41). Heidegger asserts.is. becomes. misconstrued into a relation between 'changeable beings' and 'an entity at rest' (P p. What is a serious mistake. says Heidegger. on the one hand. ID p. Only when we have achieved that do we understand truth as disclosive concealment. and something other than a being. 63). 300). on the other. properly thought. The task. 2. somehow. 'Metaphysics'. As we have seen (section 2 above). It is. Yet this.

and a state in which the abstract shapes have transformed themselves into a meaningful world of objects. objects falter and collapse. this suggests that what Heidegger discovers in Cezanne's 'late works' . against the relative absence of modelling and of both geometrical and colour perspective. that is. Since Cezanne is said to facilitate an overcoming of the ontological difference and hence of metaphysics. Their tenure remains. The experience of the Cezanne is thus. always. but above all.is the 'step back'. I suggest. to disappear again. * Normally we cannot see the glasses we are wearing. that one wears.the objects reconstitute themselves and reappear. they allow us to experience the projected character of the being ('presence') of our world.in the portrait of the gardener.) Imagine now. Then one sees not only the objects but also the source of their universal greenness. 287) of reality itself. What is. The analogue of metaphysics is ignorance of this fact. is the projected character of that greenness.miraculously . with the glasses remaining where they are. unable to sustain their integrity against the abstract patterns created by the 'plans'. What one understands. (This is the analogue of the reason that. in the studies of the 'wondrous mountain' . But then . however. I think. two-dimensional space. all the time. however. meaning-less space.Cezanne
155
nonetheless a useful one). 70-1). green-tinted sunglasses. an ignorance which will result in one taking the fact that everything shows up in shades of green to be one of the fundamental and 'universal traits' (P p. as Cezanne called his brush strokes.
. a fragile (and for that reason all the more precious) one: they threaten. completely. Unlike the early works. aflickeringalternation between two states: a state in which we experience an abstract. metaphysics is no mere philosopher's vice but rather the natural condition of human beings: our consciousness is so entirely object-directed that we have a natural disposition to focus exclusively on the projected thereby missing. Why should this be so? The salient feature of Cezanne's late works is their progressively and evermore marked 'dematerialization' of objects (plate 3). according to Heidegger. the work confronts us as an entirely abstract. For a moment. as Heidegger reads it. the project/flg (BT pp. that. one 'steps back' out of them. absolutizing one's understanding of the structure of a disclosure into the one and only true account of the structure of reality. Somehow.

This. for otherwise it could provide no 'footing' for the 'distinctions' which exist in the visible world. Heidegger calls the creative origin of the visible world . with Hölderlin. mean 'wildness and confusion' but only unintelligibility. crucial is the transition from thefirststate to the second. meaningless to us. and especially footnote 16).
. however. As an origin. the birth of the Apollonian out of the Dionysian. 'Chaos' cannot. In the last chapter we saw that. he says. ground.156
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Plate 3 Paul Cezanne. meditating on the meaning of Hölderlin's phrase. therefore.that which concealingly discloses itself as world . the holy must be structured. Mont Sainte-Victoire seen from the Colline des Larves. in Nietzsche's language. is what Heidegger takes us to experience through Cezanne: the birth of the meaningful world of objects out of its numinously meaning-less.'holy chaos' (see chapter 3 section 15. 1904-6. For it is in this transition that we experience the happening. the Ereignis or 'worlding' of world. I think.
however. yet structured. I suggest.

'worlding'. and thunder to a thundering. a 'breakthrough to the Origin'. along with worlding and world. holy chaos itself. and as such identical with the activity to which they owe their being. This is what Heidegger means in saying that Cezanne 'realizes' . verbal objects. aware of 'presence' itself.'presence' as well as 'what presences'. As with the Zen experience of the genesis of world out of the 'Nothing'. As a run is its running so our world of objects is its worlding. of 'presencing'. therefore. too. Having understood this it is only a short step to understanding the idea that the duality of presence and what presences is transformed into an 'identity'. 245).this is what sets him apart from the metaphysical tradition of Western art . There could be no possibility of experiencing reality apart from them and hence no possibility of experiencing the birth or Ereignis of world. They are. allows us to understand that this world of red earth. the
. through Cezanne. one achieves. Because they owe their birth to a worlding and endure only as long as it does. however . of Being. In Cezanne we take the 'step back' so as to become aware not only of the projected but also of the projecting. as well. is but the content of one of the uncountably many possible readings. as metaphysics thinks.we do. Thus in thematizing the Ereignis of world Cezanne thematizes. We become. This lets us understand the projected character of world. 'interpretations' (P p. the happening of world. viridian pines. a song to a singing. aware. 298) and more perspicuously says. is necessarily to experience. 'earth'. In Cezanne. that out of which it happens. The second point that needs to be emphasized in connection with the Heideggerian experience of Cezanne is that to experience the Ereignis. wondrous mountains. would inescapably intrude into every encounter with reality. as one might put it. One cannot experience 'holy chaos' giving birth to world unless one experiences. objects stand to worlding as a run stands to a running.Cezanne
157
Two points need to be emphasized concerning this Cezanne-facilitated experience. serene (and mortal) gardeners.thematizes. in the language of 'The Origin'. to. located in reality itself then those traits would always be there. as Heidegger equivalent^ (P p. as never happens in metaphysical art. makes manifest . world's 'other side'. The first is that were the 'universal traits' of objects to be.

. 146-7)). acquaintances. It is because. 'destines' or 'sends' world to us. See 'Heidegger's nachgelassene KleeNotizen' in Heidegger Studies 9. Klee 21. in Heidegger's view only partially successful. Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger (pp. attempts to gain theoretical understanding of the significance of his own work led Heidegger. Heinrich Petzet some time during the 1950s. I think. Heidegger's actual written remarks on Klee were confined by his death to the Nachlass where they exist in an extremely sketchy and incomplete condition. the following remarks are based entirely on the valuable work of Gunter Seubold.'the Klee house' as. if at all. David Thompson. The painter's. a 'second part' to 'The Origin'. a 'poet' . and the later Kunst als Enteignis. Since all the quotations I shall use appear in Kunst als Enteignis between pages 119 and 134. 5-12. Cezanne thematizes the 'It'. enables us to 'grasp the ungraspable' in its ungraspability and hence the world as a holy place. as we have seen (chapter 1 section 35). and before selling them on to the city of Düsseldorf he made them available to a Europewide circle of friends. 254-5) Heidegger speaks of the 'It' (Heidegger's capitalization) which 'gives'. In numerous places (for example. We know from Otto Pöggeler that the discovery of both Klee's paintings and his writings on art made a deep impression on Heidegger. Heidegger began to discuss Klee with his art-historian friend. Inaccessible to 'representational' thought the 'It' can be grasped. Since the Nachlass is not available to general inspection. only in 'poetic' thinking.a poet for 'needy times'.1 shall not bother to give individual references.158
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'originating region'25 out of which 'truth' appears (PLT pr$0). Hofstadter obscures the generative character of earth by translating this as 'reservoir'.26 They consist in a combination of Heidegger's own thoughts
25
26
Herkunftsbereich. who obtained permission to view the Klee notes and has published part of what he found. that Heidegger calls him. 1993. it became known (see Petzet. at the end of the poem. P pp. for a time. (Beyeler had purchased a large collection of Klees from the Pittsburgh industrialist. and scholars at his home . though it seems that the decisive encounter came with a visit to the home of Ernst Beyeler in Basel at the end of that decade. pp. an 'It' that has not been thought by the West yet remains the 'matter of thinking'. to the idea of writing a 'pendant'.

) Klee writes (and Heidegger copies):
previously one described things to be seen on the earth that one liked. is to make this hitherto invisible visible. meaning of 'vorbildlich' is 'exemplary'.Klee
159
about Klee and quotations from Klee's writings which strike him as being of particular importance. there exists the necessity for a 'deformation of the world of natural appearances' in order to disrupt the dominion of the vorbildlich. as he writes 'being' with a crossing-out through it. One of the remarks in the Nachlass is: 'What Cezanne prepares begins with Klee. (Though Heidegger clearly hears the 'bildlich'. Heidegger writes 'art' with a crossing-out through it. 'to be taken as a model'. for example. apropros Klee. the Impressionists. for Klee. Now the relativity of visible things [Einstein?] makes clear that the visible in relation to the world [Being?] as a whole is only an isolated example [disclosure?]. He must go. to
. that is. of the pictorial (and the 'aesthetic'). is 'origin of the pictorial'. which in ordinary German means 'prototype' might. everyday. 'pictorial'. This may sound like onto-theological metaphysics but since. Such a disruption is necessary in order to make possible the historical transition from the aesthetic-representational tradition in Western art to an art that is concerned to reveal the Urbildliche. here. Klee sums up the task of art. be translated as 'primarily pictorial'. or of modern art. in 'vorbildlich'. Klee describes the Urbildliche as the 'forming powers' that generate the visible. 'visible things'. idealized versions of objects of the type which belong to the everyday world (see section 15 above). if we follow Seubold's helpful suggestion of hyphenating ' Ur-bildliche' ä la Heidegger. To do this the artist must no longer be content to remain. like. The task of art. in the slogan 'vom (from the) Vorbildlichen zum (to the) Urbildlichen\ The Vorbildliche is. Urbildliche. A better translation. he continues.' So we should expect the analysis of Klee's significance to be relatively similar to that of Cezanne's. however. rather. 22. the central. to see. Art (Heidegger quotes) 'does not repeat the visible but makes visible' (compare Rilke's 'bees of the invisible').
Thus. on the 'periphery'. 'the secret ground where the primordial laws (Urgesetz) of developments are stored up'. things of the kind 'one used to portray' in Western art. for Klee. to 'the heart of creation'. or would have liked.

1940.
. Klee's art facilitates a 'breakthrough to the Origin'. he clearly takes Klee's experience of the 'Other' of manifest beings to be a non-entifying. an 'Origin' which presences in a non-metaphysical way How does this happen? Klee's concern is with the normally 'invisible'. Saint from a Window. in Heidegger's language. Like the art of Zen and Cezanne. non-metaphysical experience.160
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Plate 4
Paul Klee. then.
indicate his own freedom from metaphysics (see footnote 18 above).

Sparseness of detail. Though we may sometimes struggle to read themfigurativelyrather than non-figuratively. slowly (or relatively slowly). Heidegger observes.boats. Heidegger's idea. a temporal process in which abstract and meaning-less patterns transform themselves into the intelligibility of objects . Then. he observes that 'the sparser the indication of the object the more [it presents itself as an] appearing'. . they are 'Zustände'. . This does not. a region between 'representational (gegenständlich)' and nonrepresentational art. he observes. Rather. subliminal. faces and so on materialize before our eyes. also like Cezanne. lead him to ignore the ordinarily visible. As with Cezanne. The Ereignis of world out of 'holy chaos' happens as we watch. sketchiness. says Heidegger. into a worlding which is to be thought out of the Ereignis9.before our very eyes. But. as the painter himself puts it. on the other hand. at first. Too much detail blocks 'worlding'. Thus Klee's works are not 'finished' things. Focusing on Saint from a Window (Heilige aus einem Fenster) and The Northern God. therefore. How is this achieved? For worlding to happen in the work. Why does Heidegger say that Klee 'begins' what Cezanne only 'prepares'? Why has he moved further down the path of putting us in touch with the numinous 'It' that gives us world? Cezanne's images are. [do] not disappear'. . beings which 'stand-ready-before-one' as occasions for the experience of worlding. is that. Klee thematizes the 'her-vor-bringen' of objects. compels the viewer to 'read' the work. his art occupies.. their emergence out of the meaning-less into the clearing of intelligibility. are born out of the abstract shapes. Like Cezanne. too much detail must be avoided. I think.Klee
161
to make visible the 'other side' of beings. if only for a split. It is this intermediate character which makes it appropriate to describe his work as 'semi-abstract'. . their 'being-broughtforth-out-of-concealment'. we respond to a Klee as an entirely non-figurative work. however.fish. Rather. to become entirely 'abstract'. there
. second. a 'region-between {ZwischenReich)'. Klee thematizes both the visible and the (nonmetaphysical) invisible. [do] not disappear but step back . as the word 'picture (Bild)' implies.. unambiguous. he thematizes something else too: the Ereignis or 'worlding' of the former out of the latter: in Klee. 'objects . 'objects. I think. Heidegger notes the 'semi' with approval: in Klee.

sky is sky. Klee. who thus makes us more alive to the character of the 'Other' of beings as a 'plenitude' of alternative 'facets'. rocks are rocks. to a degree.162
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art
exists no ambiguity between different figurative 'readings'. allows a 'breakthrough' to the 'other side' of beings and thereby allows world to be experienced as a holy place. Be this as it may. in his own way. when they appear. other worlds. Penitent (1935). the images in which he is especially interested27 resemble. they are raised with genuinely critical intent. Higher Guard (1940). is different. Though it would be wrong to press the analogy too far (Klee's paintings are not. Cubism 23. Death and Fire (1940). Other objectual associations suggest themselves: 'church. too. however. the chalice/two faces in profile. like Cezanne. but sometimes. For each of them. the works explicitly present us with the presencing of other worlds as well. if only because the title disambiguates them). Sometimes these are critical in a merely formal way. Resting Sphinx (1934). Trees. unlike Cezanne. further. I want to conclude this study by constructing a number of critical questions concerning the material that has been discussed in this chapter. Serious Face (1939). finally. and so on. certain obscurities in Heidegger's thinking. This means that though Cezanne presents us with the idea of world as a 'reading' of Being and hence with the possibility of other readings. ambiguous. that possibility remains implicit rather than explicit in his 'poetic thinking'. the ambiguous cube. This means that whereas. a place of dwelling. Faces of a Region (1938). Gestalt figures the duck/rabbit.
. Little Town on Rocks (1932). the point being to illuminate. ship'.
27
In addition to the paintings already mentioned Heidegger notes down the following titles: The God of the Northern Wood (1922). Klee thematizes the presencing of world. The possibility of other 'revealings' merely implicit in Cezanne becomes explicit in Klee. are undoubtedly trees. alternative possibilities of disclosure. both Klee and Cezanne remain 'poets for needy times'. Heidegger notes (on completing his own sketch of Saint from a Window) that if one narrows one's focus to part of the face (and forgets the title) it becomes questionable whether there are 'still facial features'. As Heidegger reads them. Harmonized Strife (1937). mountains are mountains.

For what it assumes is that a certain technical feature of artworks . about Van Gogh) the scope of his admiration for. pleasure
. Everyone has had the experience of discovering the face in the clouds. as it were.Cubism
163
We have observed. the fact that while objects do not dominate the scene. in Picasso. in the entire field of the visual art of Western modernity. several times. The second part of the criticism is. common to a great deal of modern art. The first part of this criticism is easily dealt with. modern plastic artists was very much wider. in modern art. however. its being a work. one might suggest. But semi-abstraction is the salient feature of a very great deal of (at least early) modern art. is to begin with an apparently sweeping condemnation and then to discover. this must be regarded as insupportably arbitrary. I believe. A certain amusement. It is important to see. false. all the more so since the quality Heidegger admires in Klee and Cezanne is. Having admired semi-abstraction in Cezanne and Klee.is a necessary and sufficient condition of a work's being a work in which the 'breakthrough to the Origin' occurs (in which 'earth' 'rises up' through 'world'). in other words. which facilitates dwelling. Klee and Cezanne. a few shining exceptions. the criticism concludes. or in the linoleum on the bathroom floor. Heidegger ought therefore to have felt compelled to admire it in a great number of other artists. in discussing modern art. What he admires. as the biographical detail supplied in section 1 of this chapter makes clear. only two artists.what we might call the deconstruction-reconstruction of objects . in particular the art of cubism and of those influenced by it. Heidegger is trying to discover. In particular. Surely. that is to say. that both parts of this presupposition are. in fact. in the wallpaper. emerge as exceptions to the dispiriting rule. in 'The Origin'. in fact. that Heidegger's fundamental strategy. neither do they 'disappear'. Though Heidegger only wrote about Klee and Cezanne (and en passant. and involvement with. The experience offigurativeimages emerging from seemingly abstract shapes of which Heidegger makes so much in his discussions of Klee and Cezanne is actually quite commonplace. is 'semi-abstraction'. grudgingly. most people have from time to time discovered the landscape in the wood grain of the door. more interesting. 24. The first of my critical questions asks why. that deconstruction-reconstruction is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for the kind of 'greatness' which.

as we have seen. 1954).as in the ink-blot test . Yet this. but in tree. as we know. (In the case of Klee it has. for. is the colour of the holy. p. something to do with their tiny. The reason such a discovery is not an Ereignis-Qxperience is that the ground out of which the figure emerges fails to be 'holy' ground. field and earth as well.)
. brings it to presence. clearly. a sufficient condition of an artwork's being.be useful revelations of aspects of personality and may be helpful stimuli to the creative imagination. and deeply moved by some of his earlier works. that the Ere/gms-experience is accompanied by a feeling of 'transport and enchantment' (GA 65.164
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even. the 'blue depth of the aether' (PLT p. he referred to his own contribution as 'my own blue link'. one who 'founds'. Heidegger says. Heidegger had an equivocal relationship to Picasso. as Petzet reports. icon-like character. it is only in the poetic. 'the holy'. Yet none of these experiences counts as what Heidegger calls an 'isragms-experience'. 149) being the region inhabited by the gods (PLT p.28 present not just in sky. is that deconstruction-reconstruction is not. that ofte dwells. as Heidegger puts it in the explanatory comment on 'Cezanne'. Though in no doubt at all as to Picasso's titanic genius.) But what reflection onfiguresin the bathroom linoleum reveals. It is being. And to the (surely pretentious) suggestion made to him by an enthusiastic former student that he 'does the same
28
Cezanne knew that blue had a special significance for him. (Quoted on the penultimate page of Theodore Rousseau's Paul Cezanne (London: Collins. we know (from chapter 3 section 13). in this sense. Cezanne is accounted a 'poet'. In the case of both Klee and Cezanne it seems a true and important observation that the world-ground out of which objects are born is a numinous ground. in the case of Cezanne something to do with his unique and omnipresent blue. perhaps. 70). in Heidegger's sense. Blue. a 'pure radiance'. of itself. a poet that is crucial. 94). thematizes. The artist of the modern paradigm is. in the end. he doubted. would be far too purple a description of the pleasure of discovering a figure in the bathroom linoleum. may be derived from such experiences and they may sometimes . This is the reason why. the holy. 'poetic'. that his art occupied. Their works possess. as Heidegger says. in the final verse of the poem. an 'essential' place. Poeticizing the history of art as a 'chain of colour' to which each great artist added a new 'link'.

photography. 144-5). of course.
.and he is surely correct in this . he may well have. say. Encounters and Dialogues. (Though it is possible to take these remarks as deliberately provocative over-generalizations. Heidegger himself seems to me to lapse into the error of supposing that it is in his remarks on film and photography (see section 18 above). of
29
See Martin Heidegger: Photos 23 September 1966116. that film. as indicated to me in private correspondence. What is remarkable about the nearly 200 photographs in this collection is that although they nearly all portray Heidegger in a poetic. (Since. realized something of this himself. eventually. and certainly no political.) The mistake behind this attempt to make deconstruction-reconstruction a necessary condition of 'poetic' art. as already remarked.when he speaks [in the introduction to Being and Time] of the necessary 'destruction' in philosophy' Heidegger responded. with a smiling 'silence' (Petzet. pp. for the production of 'poetic' art. Juni 1968 (Frankfurt-onMain: Klostermann. und 17.) Whatever the validity of Heidegger's remarks on Kurosawa's Rashomon. Marcovicz. Yet another proof. Visconti or Wenders reveals as clearly absurd the claim that film can provide nothing but densely naturalistic representation of the mundane world.in his sense a 'poet'. in spite of his deep suspicion of the 'media'. deeply sympathetic light. 1985).Cubism
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thing as Picasso in the dismantling of the object . And so far as still photography is concerned one need go no further than the extraordinarily evocative photographs of Heidegger himself taken in and around the hut in Todtnauberg by Digne Mellor Marcovicz at the time of the 1966 interview with the journal Der Spiegel.29 to realize that. too. And neither is it a necessary condition. art criticism of a technical character is. perhaps. a reasonable acquaintance with the films of. seems to have had no personal. too. Picasso indeed 'dismantles' objects. liking for Heidegger at all. can rise to the 'poetic'. of the often noted divorce between artist and person. But deconstruction-reconstruction is not a sufficient condition of 'poetry'. I am more inclined to take them as simply displaying an ignorance of the diversity of possibilities inherent in the medium. or even part of a technique. Though. Heidegger invited Marcovicz to his home in Freiburg for a second session of photographs. cannot be 'poetic'. Bergman. Petzet reports. is to suppose that it is possible to specify a technique. and behind the attempt to make it a sufficient condition. as such. The reason for Heidegger's final lack of interest in the later Picasso is that he does not take him to be .

for example. Art. Abstract art does not liberate us to the holy. Krämer-Badoni's Zwischen allen Stühlen (Munich/Berlin: Herbig.Heidegger at times seems to forget his own (Kantian) wisdom . 41). stands at the peak of the contemporary experience of things as Bestand. not to 'solve' it (PLTp. in a 1964 letter to R. who had criticized 'The Origin' for overlooking the age of abstract art. I want now to ask. Heidegger concedes that 'this does not imply that abstract art is a branch (Ableger) of modern technology'. 'Nonrepresentational art'.
. Krämer-Badoni. that Heidegger's attitude to it has to be adjudged a mixture of arbitrary neglect and unjust denigration? The one thing that is clear about Heidegger's attitude to 'nonrepresentational (gegenstandlos)' or abstract art is that he sees it as failing to constitute a genuine break with the metaphysical character of the Western tradition. 66). It cannot be discovered in a 'creative writing class'. p. Hence his attitude to 'abstract art' really divides into two attitudes directed towards these two different kinds of art. I think. Abstract art 25. vary.no a priori specification of poetic technique is possible. Heidegger thinks of two different kinds of art as generally embraced by the vague titles 'abstract' and 'non-representational'. 79). 182. In the 1955—6 Principle of Reason. as Kant observed.is to 'see the enigma'. resource (SvG p. however. The grounds for this judgment. My second critical question concerns not 'semi-abstract' but rather abstract art proper.it is possible post facto tentatively to identify particular technical features as contributing to a poetic effect . possible .
30
Quoted in R. while continuing to insist that abstract art does not figure in a redemptive way in his thinking.166
Modern art
course. to dwelling. he says that 'that to which one gives the inappropriate title "abstract art" finds its legitimate function' in 'the region of the technical-scientific world-construction' (SvG p. The task . 1985). However.30 How are we to explain these different assessments? Reasonably clearly. cannot be reduced to a rule. he continues. Is it not the case.

for the sake of explicating his position. the picture can be read as a busy street seen from the top of a very tall skyscraper. The second type of art Heidegger has in mind. So it is innocuous. Heidegger suggests that the title 'non-representational' is misleadingly applied to the kind of art he had in mind. Mondrian invites us to view the final version as remaining figurative. to Krämer-Badoni. not-fully-abstract quality of Mondrian's work would be to apply to it the term used in connection with Klee: 'semi-abstract'. But let us. Though composed entirely of strips of brightly coloured squares. in particular.a branch with the important 'function' of self-glorification . We know that Heidegger often associates globalization. in mind) it is art of this type which he rejects as simply a 'branch' . I suggest. It is not hard to think of the kind of art this might be. of which Heidegger concedes. It is art of this kind. inter alios. contrary to appearances.) Heidegger nowhere discusses Mondrian.of Gestell One way of describing the. an idealization or. he has Mondrian in mind. The work would then fall into the same category as Ernst Jünger's Der Arbeiter and much of the work of the fascist wing of Italian Futurism in being a celebration of the disappearance of everything that was once considered essential to human dignity. Consider Mondrian's famous Broadway Boogie Woogie. I suggest. then. make the (relatively improbable) assumption that. (The same is true of his famous series of apple-tree studies. Indeed Mondrian's title invites us so to read it. I believe. If it genuinely does not represent then it cannot represent the world of Gestell and a fortiori. distinctive of the human mode of being. 'transfiguration' of Gestell. be possible (in no way do I wish to defend this reading of Mondrian's wonderful painting) to read Broadway Boogie Woogie as a celebration. is that which is fully and genuinely abstract: Kasimir Malevich's famous Black Square. It would. for example. composed entirely of lines and dashes in a sequence through which a naturalistically represented tree is progressively 'dematerialized'.Abstract art
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In the first of the above quotations. that cannot be regarded as a mere 'branch of modern technology'. uniformity (uni-formity) with Gestell In enframing. as Nietzsche would say. or collection of equi-sized units. of resource. cannot glorify it. then. that (whether or not Heidegger had Mondrian. everything is reduced to a unit.
. By locating the final study.

and thereby the dominance of the pure state of feeling . Unlike Nietzsche. a collecting together of all the individual arts.the tumult. tremendous contraction. p. Heidegger selects for special approval the fact that. Why not? Fairly clearly. This is why. as objects. 'sea'-like quality of Wagner's music. The third of my critical questions asks: does not Heidegger unjustly . Heidegger criticizes the unarticulated. This claim about (genuinely) abstract painting leads directly to the question of the absence.in Wagner's own
. the plunge into frenzy and the disintegration of sheer feeling as redemptive. Heidegger claims. as we saw. and delirium of the senses. in effect. then. what Wagner wants
is the domination of art as music. Music 26. in Heidegger.neglect music? Does he not. (N I. Rather. as a dwelling place except on the condition that it represents the world. If an artwork is to allow dwelling objects must not disappear. unphilosophically . 86. in volume I of the Nietzsche study Like Nietzsche (after breaking off his friendship with Wagner in 1876). it cannot be considered redemptive with respect to the 'destitution' of modernity created by metaphysics. my emphasis)
In 1936. perhaps better. allow it to presence. into a worlding'.168
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At the same time. of any sustained discussion of music. Heidegger's fundamental objection to Wagner is that since what he writes is. from Heidegger's perspective. to his detriment as a philosopher. evince a certain blindness in this direction? The foundations of Heidegger's stance to music go back to his critique of Wagner in the mid-thirties. Art cannot represent the world. he identifies this quality with the character of music as such. What Wagner sought in the idea of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk (collective artwork) was indeed. for the very same reason that it is innocuous. absorption in 'the bottomless sea of harmonies'. he says. however. 'objects do not disappear but step back. purely instrumental .or. structure-less. If an artwork fails to represent the world then it cannot represent it as holy. the felicitous distress that swoons in enjoyment. he claims (glossing over the difference between Wagner's earlier (pre-7rataw) and later musical theory and practice). in Klee. however. But it was by no means a collecting that granted equal rights to each.

Music

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language 'absolute' - music, he cannot 'set forth' a world - in the rich, onto-ethical sense of 'world' deployed by the Greek paradigm. By the postwar period Heidegger has ceased to require such a grandiose function of art. Yet the selection of musical works for which he expresses particular esteem - Carl OrfFs Carmina Burana as well as his music for Antigone (Petzet, Encounters and Dialogues, pp. 80, 161), and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and Persephone (D p. 113) - includes no examples of absolute music. What this strongly suggests is that, insofar as he thought about music at all, he continued to insist that in 'valid' musical artworks, music must always be subordinate to a linguistic text, subordinate, as 'The Origin' maintained, to 'poetry'. Given his concern for dwelling it is easy to discern the line of thinking that must underlie this insistence. Art cannot facilitate dwelling in the world, cannot present one's world as a holy place, unless it represents, or in some other way brings that world to presence. But this is something (absolute) music cannot do. Hence music, pleasant though it undoubtedly is, cannot be an essential art form. What are we to make of this line of thought? This is no place to become deeply involved in precisely that which is almost entirely missing in Heidegger; the philosophy of music, I shall content myself, therefore, with a few brief and, I fear, dogmatic remarks. Theorists of music, by and large, seem to agree with Schopenhauer's assertion that, with the deviant exception of 'programme' music, music does not represent the 'outer', visible world. Apart from formalists who hold that music is connected to nothing but music, they tend to conclude from this that the domain of music is the 'inner' world of feeling. The significance of music, it is frequently suggested, is that it 'expresses' emotion or at least something closely related to emotion. Thinking about music is dominated by the 'inner-outer' contrast together with the notion that the domain of music is confined to the 'inner'. Insofar as he thinks about music at all, Heidegger's thinking about music, too, is dominated by this contrast - in spite of the fact that his general philosophy is devoted to demolishing it. Left to itself, his remarks on Wagner affirm, music brings to presence a 'pure state of feeling'; the inner, subjective response to worldly things and events severed, however, from their usual objective complement. The effect is no doubt relaxing

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and 'aesthetically' pleasing, but it does not help make our world a place of dwelling. Nietzsche did not make the mistake of supposing music to be confined to a supposed 'inner' world of feeling. (Though his own music, as Hans von Bülow told him, is entirely without merit, he did, at least, write music and understood it in a way that Heidegger could not.) The full title of his first book is: The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. What Nietzsche understood in this title is that it is not the case that music's only route to the bringing of a world to presence is by accommodating itself to a preexistent text. Music does not have to take second place to drama because it can itself give 'birth' to drama, to action, to a world - as painters, like Mondrian, who have derived inspiration from musical sound and mood, have always known. Another fact which points in the same direction is the disposition of listeners to give titles, Pastoral Symphony, Moonlight Sonata (titles which may be more or less appropriate) to works of absolute music. Translated into Heidegger's language, what Nietzsche understood was that music possesses, in fact to a consummate degree, the power to be an Ereignis-QxpQYiQncQ. Heidegger's discounting of absolute music is thus, I believe, in his own terms, a serious error as perhaps, for similar reasons, is his blanket discounting of the (genuinely) abstract in painting. Of Webern, Heidegger said, in a letter to the musicologist Martin Zenk,31 that he could find 'no point of entry'. Though the remark, in this particular case, might well be forgiven, it actually applies, to a rather large degree, to Heidegger's relationship to music in general. Only someone afflicted by a certain musical deafness, or lack of musical education, could, even for a moment, be tempted to suppose Wagnerian 'structurelessness' to be a quality of Western music in general. To a degree, Heidegger's musical deafness diminishes his thinking about art. He was, however, gifted, to a consummate degree, with a sensitivity to the poetic word. It seems to be a rough kind of truth that those who are hypersensitive to one art form are typically afflicted by a compensatory blindness to another. The price we pay for Heidegger's - among philosophers, it seems to me unparalleled - insight into poetry is the comparatively low quality of his thinking about music.
31

See Seubold, Kunst als Enteignis, p. 79 footnote 126.

& philosophy of art?

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A philosophy of art? 27. The final critical question I wish to discuss comes in two parts. The first arises from Heidegger's discussion of Eastern art. His interest in this, it will be remembered, is generated and sharpened by the sense that in authentically Eastern art he has discovered something that is an exception to, lies outside the margins of, an 'all-consuming Europeanization' {OWL p. 16). Yet he ends up discovering, as the essence of Zen art, precisely the presencing of that 'Other' of beings which he discovers, too, to be the essence of Rilke, Klee and Cezanne. In the end, therefore, the essence of great Eastern art turns out to be the same as the essence of great Western art. The first part of my critical question asks, therefore: does not Heidegger end up denying the difference between East and West, falling, in other words, into precisely the trap he sought to avoid? The second part of the question observes that even though Heidegger thought deeply about those Western artists he admired, there remains much about them that he ignores. Thus with regard to Klee, for example, in spite of the undoubted insight of Heidegger's observations, what strikes one is how much that is salient in, and central to the distinctiveness of, Klee's art - his humour, his unchildish childishness, his immersion in dreams and the unconscious - is simply ignored. And with regard to Cezanne neither his overpowering sensuousness, his manifest concern to 'realize [his] sensations' of 'the magnificent richness of colour that animates nature' nor his neoclassical concern to 'treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone'32 receives any mention at all. The question then arises, to put it in a slogan: does not Heidegger Heideggerize the art he admires? Putting the two parts of the question together, then: does not Heidegger Europeanize Eastern art and Heideggerize European art, and so end up Heideggerizing everything? The first part of this question can be quickly dealt with. It is not the case that Heidegger denies the essential difference between Eastern and Western art since, as we have seen, he maintains that while the (postsupernaturalist) Western tradition is, qua tradition, mimetic, metaphysical, the Eastern tradition, though 'pictorial', is not. What Heidegger
32

however. a philosophy of art. Pursuing this line of thought. An echo of art is not. appropriating what he found to be useful and ignoring the rest. Heidegger. That different artists may have the same ultimate concern no more obliterates their uniqueness and difference than the fact that different religions are concerned with 'the divine'. Does Heidegger 'Heideggerize' the Western art. he does. 'therefore'. which interests him? The answer is.
. and so on . the art in general. obliterates theirs. One reply to this criticism. But why should this be problematic? Because. the thought presumably runs.172
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rather does is to discover an affinity between particular Western artists and the Eastern tradition. this seems to me the wrong response to the critical question. not intended to possess 'the character of a philosophy of art' {Kunst als Enteignis. with understanding the standing of beings to being and being to Being. The second part of the question is. on a certain understanding of 'Heideggerize'. 46). on the occasions that their paths come close to convergence. art 'echoes' in Heidegger's thinking.the vocabulary of 'Being'. I think. however. 'Ereignis9. Though Heidegger himself was often disposed to a 'post-philosophical' view of his thinking. one might suggest. that. From time to time he found insight and assistance in the works of individual artists.it is. 'clearing'. is to suggest that since Heidegger's discussion of art is 'integrated' so completely into the structure and vocabulary of his late philosophy . p. was concerned above all with his own Seinsphilosophie. For what is quite clearly the case is that both what he talks about and the way he talks about it are determined by his own unique way of thinking and writing. and when he did he would approach them on an opportunistic basis. quite evidently. p. more interesting. so the subtext to the question suggests. Encounters and Dialogues. Does he obliterate the difference between those particular artists and their Eastern counterparts? Surely not. one that is offered by Gunter Seubold. 98). one might be inclined to quote Georges Braque's inscription on the back of a lithograph he sent to Heidegger as a seventieth birthday present: 'Echo begets echo / everything reflects back / for Martin Heidegger' (quoted in Petzet. or that different languages are concerned to 'talk about reality'. As Braque saw. such an approach to art is inconsistent with the kind «of impartiality and objectivity that allows an approach to art to count as properly philosophical. For three reasons.

. though they are usually polemically overstated. is an unreasonable expectation of comprehensiveness. sometimes unclear. The discussion of music is thin and weak. any obligation on the philosopher of art to give arts and artists 'equal rights'. and dance. (Witness. non-existent. rather than dutifully and impartially attending to those figures agreed by common consent to be 'great'.A philosophy of art?
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First. and seriously interesting. for example. If his generalizations had been more restricted his meaning would have often been clearer. I fail to see. and occasionally. based on ignorance. It is true that his treatment of the individual arts is uneven. (post-Greek) theatre. in fact. as in the case of film. it is true. however.) The second error that is embodied. in the Heideggerattempts-no-philosophy-of-art position.that it is to facilitate dwelling . art forms in which he actually has relatively little interest and consequently about which he has relatively little of interest to say. Heidegger offers seriously intended. should not approach art from the perspective of his own thought structure and vocabulary. Schopenhauer's dutiful attention to landscape gardening and animal painting. views about the character of Western art in general And he offers too. (In fact. it seems to me. of novels. For as we have seen. and most important reason Seubold's attempted 'defence' of Heidegger's discussion of art seems to me in error is that it accepts. At the beginning of the Enlightenment there was. not the case that Heidegger's discussion of art is confined to opportunistic forays into the works of individual artists. especially strongly to him and about whom he has something special to say. there is too much. the requirement that the philosopher of art should be 'objective'. There is thus no lack of generality in Heidegger's discussion of art. And with regard to individual artists of modernity.and in postmodernity .that it is to recreate authentic community. without question. Heidegger attends to those and only those who speak. and it is true that philosophers of art have traditionally felt obligated to climb methodically through the 'hierarchy' of the arts. a seriously important view about the role of art in modernity . it is. The third. a close association between philosophers and encyclopaedists.) But the philosopher is no encyclopaedist and it is a mistake to impose on the former duties that properly belong to the latter.

one's own 'horizon' of understanding (Ister pp. that all (non-pointless) interpretation is perspectival. I suspect. in this respect. second. first. 61-3). I see no reason to suppose that. philosophical interpretation should be different from interpretation of any other sort. in other words. or semi-omniscient. Considered as such. as the unconscious by-product of the ancient. of the philosopher. The inclination to demand. he has no quarrel with its general approach and style. it appears. This suggests that he has little general difficulty with Heidegger's view (later elaborated by his pupil. Hans-Georg Gadamer) that. there is no point in interpreting an artwork unless that interpreting is also an appropriating. but erroneous. being. The view. the View from nowhere' can only be explained. and.174
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Seubold wishes to read Heidegger's discussion as art interpretation of a non-'art philosophical' character. disposition to elevate the (true) philosopher to the status of an omniscient. that appropriation is always a 'translation' of the work into one's own frame of reference.
.